If you’ve fallen and you can’t get up, as the cable TV commercial says, you can call for help. But residents of retirement communities will have an easier way to summon aid through safety systems developed by Pittsburgh's Touchtown.  The smart no-fail systems can contact residents to check on them whether they’re in or out of their homes.

In October, Oakmont-based Touchtown received nearly $150,000 from The Technology Collaborative to develop new safety communications products among the array the firm offers to senior living communities. And as CEO Jeff Pepper admits, Pittsburgh, with one of the nation’s highest proportions of elderly residents, is a great place to test Touchtown’s products: "there are lots of retirement facilities here."

Touchtown will use its first-ever dollars from The Tech Collaborative, which supports robotic and high-tech start-ups statewide, to develop services that withstand power outages and other emergency problems and maintain communication with residents wherever they are. The wireless mesh network "merges the notification component with a touch screen that can be used for other things," says Pepper, combining emergency communications, two-way communications and location tracking.

The Tech Collaborative funding will help Touchtown add some features to e-call, an emergency communications system which delivers audio to a small pendant the size of  an iPod Nano, while finding the wearer’s location. "Nobody else is doing this," says Pepper. "There are dozens of different systems, but none give a precise location where the patient is--on the grounds, in a stairwell, or  in the apartment."

Another safety service is delivered in a small device like a digital photo frame. The touch screen displays easy-to-read messages from staff and allows residents to check in daily. Touchtown’s future enhancements for that device include a concierge service to order goods and services, and an individual photo gallery, probably linked to a web service like Picasa.

Touchtown serves 800 retirement communities in the U.S. and Canada,  and will test the new services with 225 residents of a Denver retirement community in the first quarter of 2010.

Source: Jeff Pepper, Touchtown
Writer: Chris O'Toole