Digital Tools and Apps to Help You as a Caregiver

Whether you’re an aging adult who needs some additional support with everyday tasks or you’re caring for an elderly parent or relative, there are many innovative tools and programs that can provide additional aid for families throughout Gastonia, NC

As a caregiver for your loved one, you probably have a lot on your plate. While rewarding, caregiving is also a full-time job that comes with many responsibilities and concerns. Luckily, with modern technology, caregiving can be a bit easier and more manageable.

Let us take a look at the best digital tools and apps that can help you on a day-to-day basis.

Communication Tools

When you are your parent's caregiver, you need to talk to a lot of people during the week, including doctors, therapists, various service providers, family members, and friends. You can communicate with all of them via emails, text messages, phone calls, and other phone apps. And if you want to see someone while talking to them, you can use Skype, FaceTime or Zoom, which are all great solutions for keeping in touch with family and friends who live far away.

However, even with these tools, managing all your daily communication regarding your loved one can be exhausting. Fortunately, there is a free tool that can make your life much easier - CaringBridge is a tool that lets you create a private website where you can post information about your loved one, pictures included, and share the link to the site with the people you want to have access to it.

Medication Management Tools

According to JAMA Internal Medicine, 87 percent of seniors use at least one prescription medication daily. 26 percent of older adults take five or more medications on a daily basis. Medication safety and management are of paramount importance to your loved one's health and well-being. As their caregiver, you need to make sure they are taking the right dose of their meds at the right time. This is, of course, easier said than done, especially if you have no medical training and your loved one lives with a condition that needs to be managed with medications.

Here are some medication management tools at your disposal:

- Reminder Rosie ($119.95) - a personalized reminder system that can be used not just for medications but appointments and other daily tasks.

- MedCoach ($4 per month unless you have a Jitterbug smartphone or flip phone) - a service that sends medication reminder messages to your phone via GreatCall. It can connect you to your local pharmacy for medication refills.

- PillPack- a service that sorts and packages medications by the dose and ships them to your chosen address. Each dose features a label with the date and time when it needs to be taken.

- The Sagely SMART Weekly Pill Organizer ($34.95) - a pill organizer with 7 containers that makes medication management easy. You can use it with the free Sagely Pill Reminder App, which is available for both Android and iOS devices.

Online Support Groups

If you don't want to go to your local support group or wish to talk to people more often, there are many closed groups on Facebook designed for family caregivers, like Caregivers Connect and Caregivers and the Eldercare Community. You can share your experiences with caring for your senior parent or relative in these groups, ask others for advice, and more.

Caregiving.com is another option. It features numerous online support groups for care providers, so you can talk to others who are in your position 24/7.

Finally, you can also check out #ElderCareChat or #CareChat on Twitter and meet and converse with caregivers around the country.

Additional Tools & Devices That Can Be Useful

- The Care Calendar by Lotsa Helping Hands (free) - a tool for delegating care and managing all appointments and daily care tasks.

- Great Call's Lively - a wearable medical alert system that can help save your loved one's life in case of an emergency.

- Medical Guardian - a personal emergency response system that ensures quicker response times in cases of falls, medical emergencies, and other incidents and accidents.

Visiting Angels of Gastonia, NC, is a leading provider of non-medical in home care services for seniors. To learn more about the in-home assisted living services provided by our staff of compassionate caregivers, please call our Gastonia office at (704) 825-3350 or contact us for more information.

Visiting Angels proudly serves Alexis, Belmont, Bessemer City, Boiling Springs, Casar, Charlotte, Cherryville, Cramerton, Crouse, Dallas, Earl, Fallston, Gastonia, High Shoals, Iron Station, Kings Mountain, Lattimore, Lawndale, Lincolnton, Lowell, McAdenville, Mooresboro, Polkville, Shelby, Stanley, Vale, Waco, and the surrounding areas of North Carolina.