Tracking patients with dementia - Oxfordshire & Buckinghamshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust

Around 700,000 people in the UK suffer from dementia and it is predicted that this will rise to over a million by 2025. It is estimated that up to 60% of dementia-patients ‘wander’ – and that around 40% have got lost as a result, causing distress to themselves and their families.
Subsequently, around 25% of these patients are locked into their houses by worried relatives – a response which may be understandable but is neither desirable nor sustainable.

The costs of caring for patients with dementia are estimated to be around £8 billion per annum in the UK. Wandering increases seven-fold the level and pace of institutionalisation - at an approximate average cost to Social Services departments of £600 per person per week.

Developed by a Consultant and Honorary Senior Clinical Lecturer in Old Age Psychiatry from the Oxfordshire & Buckinghamshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust, My Beacon uses Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) technology to locate a person to within 100 metres when they have wandered. The patient carries the GPS device on a belt clip or in a pocket or handbag; it is similar in size to a small mobile phone and is charged up in the same way. Web-based tracking is then used to monitor the patient’s whereabouts. The carer is notified by SMS when the device moves outside of a pre-set boundary (Geofence) so that an appropriate person (the carer, a family-member or, if necessary, a police officer) can find them using these GPS locations and help them to return home.

The system’s inventor has extensive clinical and research experience in the needs of patients suffering with dementia and has been working on this idea for “a decade or so”. He entered it – and won a prize – in a NISE innovation competition in 2005.

My Beacon offers patients and their carers important but unquantifiable benefits such as improved physical safety, greater freedom, constant reassurance and improved quality of life. It also enables people with dementia to remain at home for longer, with very tangible benefits for the NHS and the taxpayer. It is calculated that even a one per cent reduction in the institutionalisation of dementia-sufferers would save the UK taxpayer some £8.1 million per annum.

Further information on My Beacon can be found at either
www.wanderingindementia.co.uk or www.followus.co.uk

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