We at the iGuardFire company had recognized the importance for people to stay at home longer while remaining safe and Independent. This market is the now called Aging in Place.
People can lose the ability to interact with a dishwasher but that’s no big deal. But when they can’t interact with their stove then it’s typically time for a care home. And as we know care homes are hard to find space in, they are expensive to families and can be very demoralizing on some elderly people who have been independent all their lives
I ran into this with my parents many years ago. Our mother had got cancer and while undergoing treatments the medications she was given were affecting her memory and her low energy levels seriously affected her ability to use the stove. As she was declining at home, she was slowly using the stove less and less and as she slowly lost her relationship with her beloved stove the cooking duties fell into Dad’s lap.
On top of Dad not being very experienced in managing cooking he could be easily distracted by mom’s sometimes sudden and immediate need for his assistance. The situation and pressure dad was under with mom‘s situation and now the cooking really started to concern us.
My other 2 siblings and I, being in different provinces, would have loved to be able to take an active role in watching what was happening with Dads cooking and his interactions with the stove but it was physically impossible.
This just nothing but increase the stress level for everyone. There needed to be a better way to keep a watchful eye over them.
Learning from this experience and reacting to this exploding marketplace we created the iGuardStove device that automatically shuts off the kitchen stove when it sees the cooking has been forgotten thereby preventing fires.
This provides families with a great level of peace of mind.
Our iGuardStove arrived Monday morning it is now installed. It has made an 83-year-old lady with early stage dementia happy that she could use her stove again. iGuardFire seems like a great outfit to deal with and it’s been a very satisfying experience. – Bryan M. – British Columbia
The iGuardStove was great device but we knew we could do better so we added in Late Night Locks and a Caregiver Lock so you could control when the stove can and can’t be used.
This increased the peace of mind for everyone to a whole new level.
For the price of 2 days in a nursing home this product is a bargain! WE love our iGuardStove and I really don’t think that my mother could live at home without it. It is the number one most important piece of equipment to keep Mom at home. Outstanding product. – John K. from Wisconsin
We then added an Internet feature to the iGuardStove that when connected to the iGuardServer allows the device to send out alerts when certain situations have arisen and immediate attention needs to be given.
The peace of mind was now invaluable
I searched for two years for a product like this and I bought it as soon as I saw it. It has been 18 months since I installed the iGuardStove. I used the data that it collected to determine my mother’s eating habits and to determine if she was eating a hot meal on a regular basis and it also allowed me to chart a progression of her dementia. Each time I received the notification text that the stove had been shut off automatically, I called her to see if everything was ok.
It has allowed her to maintain her independence and live in her own home. If I was to put a dollar value on the actual savings to this point I would say in Retirement home fees alone it is near $70,000. It was a great investment. The peace of mind is priceless. – Jim B. from Newfoundland
We thought this was creative but we needed to step it up. We then got our thinking caps on and gave the iGuardStove the ability to record the times people use the stove and the number of times the stove has been forgotten. This allowed families to track the changes in people’s memories by watching the number of time the stove has been forgotten from month to month.
Our iGuardStove device was installed in my mother’s home last May. My mother lives alone in her own home and has developed short-term memory problems. What a great relief it is to know that my mother is no longer at risk of forgetting that her stove or oven is on and causing a fire. Your device is enabling my mother to continue to live safely in her own home, and has brought me great peace of mind. – Kathleen W. from Seattle
This was an incredible advancement and families were sending us these wonderful testimonies.
After hearing stories from our customers about people falling and remaining undiscovered for hours or even days we then realized that we have a motion sensor located in the heart of the home and could help solve that problem as well. After recognizing that terrible problem we created the Daytime Monitor which would send you an alert if someone doesn’t enter the kitchen, the heart of the home, first thing in the morning. Then it slides a 3-hour Grace Window throughout the day until bedtime. Each time it sees motion it resets the 3-hour window and nothing happens. But If no motion during that 3-hour window a text alert gets sent out suggesting you check in on your loved one. Wet were on a roll.
We also added the Nighttime Monitor that tracks motion during late night hours. This allows families to discover any sleep disorders like insomnia or sleepwalking that may have been caused from medications. The following testimony came from a customer who always suspected that her mother wasn’t sleeping because she was so tired during the day. But they couldn’t fix what they couldn’t prove. After ONE night with our new software she called us and told us that it recorded that her mother had walked through the kitchen 8 times during the night from 11pm to 6 am. The poor woman’s medication was in fact keeping her up. They then knew how to attack the problem.
I am informing you that we will no longer be using the iGuardStove device as my mother has now been relocated to a care home. The device has been exceedingly helpful for monitoring my mother’s safety, particularly when the motion sensor was activated for Nighttime monitoring to complement the stove usage reports and stove disabling when unattended. Your assistance throughout the process was professional and helpful and I want to extend a personal thank you to you for your work. The information provided from the iGuard technology was supportive of safety and quality of life for elderly family living independently for as long as possible and helpful for my informed family care giving responsibilities even as I lived quite a distance from my mother. – Linda R. from Ontario
The peace of mind this give families now is at an all time high!
Using the online account family and care workers can access all of the data and settings from anywhere they have access to a computer or smart device. Care workers can add many iGuardStoves to their accounts so they can monitor situations and provide black and white evidence for families that just can’t make proper evaluation due to their inability to be in the home every day.
The alerts are another fantastic feature that can alert loved ones, care workers, neighbors or building managers that immediate attention is required. This invaluable information can help circumvent dangerous situations that could lead to home damage, loss of structure or worse yet the loss of a loved one.
We are now supplying the iGuardStove to many residential homes and Adult Living Communities across North America and in 2018 will be a part of BestBuy’s new Assured Living program.
We even have a test device in Australia where it is performing admirably and successfully sending data to the server from half way around the world.
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What is a provocation or insight that might inspire others during this challenge?
If this story touches you because you can relate to the terror of walking in to your loved one’s home to see it full of smoke from a cooking fire then we challenge you to spread the word so that other families can enjoy the peace of mind while helping their loved ones stay at home independently.