Golden Gadgets

By DOUGLAS WALLER

Think the high-tech market of the future is just teens, tweens and twentysomethings who want their iPods smarter, their Xboxes faster and their cell phones thinner? Consider this: in the next 10 to 20 years, 78 million baby boomers in the U.S. will reach ages when health care is a worry. That sizable number--and the billions of dollars it represents in potential sales--has sent companies scrambling for technology to help seniors cope with the infirmities that come with aging while maintaining their autonomy. Here's a preview of some of the fascinating gadgets currently in the works:

AN ALERT WATCH

The elderly often land in the hospital because they've forgotten to take medication. Microsoft and Intel are developing a wristwatch that prompts the wearer to take his pills. The doctor types into his computer instructions on when medication should be taken, and the information is transmitted to the patient's computer, which downloads it to the watch. Around the appointed hour, when the senior is near the location where the pills are stored, a sensor tracking the senior's movements alerts the watch, which signals that it's medicine time. The watch, which should be available in two years, can also alert the doctor if the meds aren't taken.

NOT JUST A CANE

Intel has been researching a cane with a sensor that sends an alert when the cane hasn't been used for several days, a tip-off that its user may be unable to move around. The company is also looking at sensors that in the next couple of years might be placed in canes or shoes to inform a doctor about the minute changes in a senior's stride that may be an early indication of neurological problems such as Parkinson's.

THE HEALTH-E-CHAIR

This recliner with electronic biosensors can measure things like weight and blood pressure when a person just plops in it to watch television. The readings are transmitted by phone line to a control center where a nurse reviews them and can chat with the patient about his condition from the screen of his TV set. Commwell, Inc., the Illinois firm that makes the chair, hopes to lease the system to customers for $150 a month beginning in 2007.

MEMORY-JOGGING GLASSES

This eyewear, developed by M.I.T.'s Media Laboratory, has a tiny name-storage device that picks up the identification signal cell phones emit and then searches its database to see if a name matches. A miniprojector on the stem flashes the name of the friend or relative encountered on the glass lens for one two-hundredth of a second--so fast it isn't noticeable, yet lab tests have shown the subliminal prompt is enough to improve name recall by 50%. In the prototype, wearers must carry a battery wired to the glasses, but eventually a wireless system will be available.

THE SMART TABLE

The Microsoft-designed tabletop has an overhead camera that records a patient's pill intake. There is also a projector that beams down a checkerboard image, allowing a virtual game between friends in different homes. Being tested: having the camera record the board moves and then feeding those images to a computer, which analyzes the times it takes a player to make a move and the speed and dexterity with which he shifts the checkers, to spot changes that might indicate a deterioration in brain functions.

AN ANALYTICAL PHONE

It has been nicknamed "caller ID on steroids," and it helps Alzheimer's patients in the early phases of the disease who stop calling friends for fear they can't remember voices and names, a form of isolation that can lead to depression, accelerate the disease and put them in a nursing home. An Intel phone comes with a screen that projects a caller's picture and name along with a note typed or recorded by the two parties after their previous phone conversation, describing what they had discussed. The memory joggers make the patient more willing to keep in touch with loved ones.