Please enjoy the following article from our friend Harry Cline of The New Caregiver's Comprehensive Resource: Advice, Tips, and Solutions from Around the Web.  Thank you Harry!

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Having a loved one who lives far away from you can be a hard thing to deal with. It’s even harder when that loved one needs care.  Making sure loved ones have the help and care they need can be difficult.  You need to keep up with medications, doctor visits, plans for procedures, and everything else that comes into play with any kind of disability, and aging as a whole.  With the new prevalence of smartphones and technology, it makes it easier than ever to keep an extra eye on your loved ones, even if they are far away. 

Eyes in the Sky

With technology, you can now keep an eye on your loved ones over the internet with a camera like Nest or one made by Logitech.  These can be installed in your loved one’s home. They both come with services where you can keep storage backed up onto the cloud, and you can keep close to a month of video saved.  Technology like this can be a huge help for both peace of mind and making sure your loved one is taking the medications he or she needs to. 

There are plenty of applications on the market as well that help with all kinds of things related to the care of your loved one.   One app, called CareZone, is a fantastic catch-all for anything you could possibly need help with.  It allows tracking of doctor visits, medications, and symptoms, all of which can be seen by those who are given access by the senior using the app.  This “health info organizer” keeps track of dosages and refills for prescriptions, as well as notifies you and your loved one about needing to take medicine on time. 

Not only can this help you keep a close eye on your loved ones to make sure they really are taking their medication, it is even available for free on both the iTunes and Google Play stores.  It’s like having a full-blown nursing staff in your pocket!  For seniors who have a smartphone, life can get pretty boring if all they do is track medications and get on Facebook to keep close tabs on the friends they have.  Luckily, there are plenty of apps that also help them keep their minds sharp.

Hiring From Afar

For those situations where you just can’t be there for your loved ones when they need you to be, there are plenty of services that you can quickly create a mobile profile on.  One such site is Care.com, where you can hire someone to be there for your loved ones.  This means, if they need full-time care, you could find an independent caregiver.  Even if you need to hire a dog walker to take your loved one’s dog on a walk during the day, you could hire and pay someone through an app. You could also find someone to water the plants if your loved one is in the hospital.  

Everyone wants to be able to help take care of aging parents and friends, but when you don’t live close to them, it can make it really difficult to help.  New technology makes it easy to be there for your loved one, even if you can’t be there in person.