Solution of easily and certainly to watch the dementia & Alzheimer’s patient wandering.
Shoes of be able to Built-in GPS device.“Uraraca GPS Walk”
Uraraca GPS Walk won the Good Design Award 2015.
Japan is an advanced country in an aging society
According to a report by Japanese Governments Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare in January 2015, the number of dementia and ALzheimer’s patients in Japan is estimated to be approximately 4.62 million as of 2012, or 1 in 7 of the elderly aged 65 or older.
Including the approximately 4 million people estimated to be “mild cognitive impairment (MCI)”, which is considered to be a pre-dementia stage, approximately 1 in 4 elderly people is dementia and Alzheimer’s or its preliminary group.
It is certain that the number of dementia and Alzheimer’s patients will increase as Japan ages.
The number of dementia and Alzheimer’s patients is expected to reach around 7 million in 2025 when the baby boomers reach the age of 75 or older, accounting for about 1 in 5 of the elderly aged 65 or older.
Pharmaceutical companies around the world are developing medicine to improve and treat dementia and Alzheimer’s, but none have yet succeeded in developing complete medicine.
In Japan, where the number of dementia and Alzheimer’s patients is increasing, the disappearance of dementia and Alzheimer’s patients due to their wandering behavior has become a social problem.
According to an announcement by Japanese National Police Agency,87962 reports of missing persons were received annually in Japan in 2018,and the number of reported missing persons has remained constant for about 10 years.
However, the number of people missing due to dementia and Alzheimer’s has been increasing year by year. In 2018, the number was 16927, an increase of 1064 (6.7%) from the previous year.
Dementia and Alzheimer’s are becoming the main cause of the disappearance.
In addition, it was not until 2012 that statistics on the number of missing persons caused by dementia and Alzheimer’s were started to be collected, and it can be said that the problem of the wandering behavior caused by dementia and Alzheimer’s has finally emerged in Japan.
Shoes of be able to Built-in GPS device.“Uraraca GPS Walk”
To monitor the wandering behavior caused by dementia and Alzheimer’s, we developed our footwear” uraraca GPS Walk”
“uraraca GPS Walk” is a footwear designed to help people maintain a GPS or Beacon device for tracking a wandering person’s location without damaging their dignity.
GPS tracker and the like are effective devices for knowing location information and preventing missing persons due to wandering, but it is a problem to have them, and a method to have them surely has not been found, so they have not become popular.
GPS tracker become smaller and lighter with advances in technology.We thought we could be built into shoes, so we developed footwear “uraraca GPS Walk” to save people with dementia.
Effectiveness of “Uraraca GPS Walk”
“Uraraca GPS Walk” have a space in which GPS tracker can be built in the sole part .And they have protective plate for the device.
Why is it more reliable to have a GPS or beacon in his/her shoes?
In Japan nowadays, families are increasingly watching the elderly.
In the case of watching with family members, you have to put away all of your family’s shoes, place only the GPS Walk at the entrance, and choose between wearing the GPS Walk or going barefoot when he/she goes out.
When a patient with dementia and Alzheimer’s goes out wearing shoes “uraraca GPS Walk”, his/her family can obtain positional information such as GPS tracker and know his/her current location.
Even if he/she goes out barefoot without wearing uraraca GPS Walk, people around them can easily notice abnormal situations such as wandering instead of walking for a purpose.
For the elderly couple,the easily solution to prevent the missing with dementia and Alzheimer’s is to put away all their shoes and put only “uraraca GPS walk” in the entrance.
Until now, there was no guarantee of safety and security because there was a risk that they would go out when your grand mother wasn’t looking, and there were risks involved in going to the bathroom, taking a bath or even going to bed.
You can check the location even if he go out without permission by using “uraraca GPS Walk”.
Purpose of establishment
Our company was established in 2012 to make shoes that are easy for the elderly to wear. “Cheer you up from your feet. I want to walk lightly and live lightly. I want to give you a smile from your feet.” This idea and ingenuity are incorporated in the manufacturing process.
My father is a shoe manufacturer in Kobe and the factory collapsed in the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake in 1995. I and my father have been living with shoes as my occupation. I want to repay social contribution, so I established this company and I make shoes that I wanted my father and mother to wear.
And we put all of its know-how of producing shoes into “uraraca GPS Walk”.
Uraraca GPS Walk won the Good Design Award 2015.
Good Design Award has been a sole comprehensive design evalution and commendation system in japan since 1957.
As public evidence, Japanese Governments Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare reported GPS trackers in “efforts of municipalities and regions to prevent and find missing persons” in 2017.
It is introduced as a good case of the monitor investigation of nursing robot, etc. in “development and 2018 popularization of nursing robot and welfare tool” of Japanese Governments Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare in 2019.
In addition, it was recognized that its main purpose was not profit, and it acquired the Kobe Social Business Mark in 2017.