 Uncomfortable with tech, many are struggling to use modern tools to keep up with friends and family in the pandemic.
For more than a week, Linda Quinn, 81, has isolated herself inside her Bellevue home to keep away from the coronavirus. To ease the solitude, Ms. Quinn’s daughter, son-in-law and two grandsons wanted to hold video chats with her through Zoom. Making plans to call and talk her by installing the app on her computer. Five minutes before the scheduled chat, Ms. Quinn realized she had not used her computer in about four months and could not remember the password. Panicked, she called her 20-year-old grandson who had set up the computer for her, and luckily he had the password. As life has increasingly moved online during the pandemic, an older generation that grew up in an analog era is facing a digital divide. Often unfamiliar or uncomfortable with apps, gadgets and the internet, many are struggling to keep up with friends and family through digital tools.
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 The increasing use and sophistication of new technical products and remote platforms for monitoring patients and family members was recently profiled in this great article from the New York Times by Katherine C. Pearson (Dickinson Law, Penn State). It offers many suggestions and solutions you may not have considered for monitoring your loved one’s care.
How technology can help families monitor the health and safety of older people kept from their families by the coronavirus. Norman Potter’s mother, Dorothy, who suffers from a chronic pulmonary illness, lives alone in the mountain town of Newland, N.C., two hours from his home in Winston-Salem. For a year, Mr. Potter has been looking for technology that would enable him to monitor his mother’s health from afar. |
