Many traditional personal emergency response devices are limited in that they they traditionally keep seniors tethered to their homes. That’s an outmoded way in the era of powerful wearables.
Kanega Watch was designed to replace traditional emergency alert devices for seniors and doesn’t require a smartphone to operate. As an added plus, it’s more fashionable than many standard watches on the market. The company claims that focus groups have called Kanega a wearable version of OnStar for seniors because it provides discreet support for falls, medication reminders, and a guard against wandering, according to its Kickstarter campaign.
Kanega uses an easy speech interface rather than buttons and also features Bluetooth Smart technology and patent-pending quick-swap batteries that peel away from the watch for charging. The product costs $299 and will ship in February 2016. A separate charging cradle with two additional batteries is included. Replacement batteries are provided free with a monitoring service that costs $35 to $85 a month depending on the service level chosen.
Kanega mostly relies on emergency notification but there have been other products that focus more on passive monitoring. Lively focuses on monitoring independent seniors in their homes although the company has come out with a wearable.