Summary:
- Once fiercely independent, an unexpected fall made seniors like Maggie Mahen realise that true independence isn’t about doing everything alone, but about staying safe and supported while living life on her own terms.
- The BOP Button, a one-touch personal alert button linking users to a 24/7 response centre, offers seniors and caregivers peace of mind, helping them respond swiftly in emergencies and easing caregiver stress and guilt.
- Beyond individual homes, BOP’s expansion across rental blocks and community care apartments reflects Singapore’s push to enable ageing in place – empowering seniors to live independently yet securely within their communities.
Maggie Mahen never thought herself as someone in need of a personal alert button. The 66-year-old clocks 12-hour night shifts as a full-time security officer and lives alone in her Bishan flat.
Even though she lives solo, the senior feels more than capable of “handling everything I need to handle by myself”.
However, six months ago, she fell unexpectedly in her living room. It wasn’t a bad one – Maggie was able to get herself to the hospital, where she was given an all-clear – but it was enough to shake her confidence.
According to America’s Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, more than one in four older people fall each year, with around a third of those falls leading to injuries requiring medical treatment or restricted activities for at least a day. A senior’s risk of falling doubles after their first fall.
"I realised that maybe, I was too fixed on my idea of independence."
Instead of fixating on doing everything alone, she reframed her idea of independence into “being able to do everything we want to do”, even if it meant enlisting the help of others to achieve it.
Advertisement
Personal alert buttons a "safety net" for seniors
Therefore, Maggie’s priority was now to ensure she’d never lose her ability to “live a purpose-driven life”.
She started looking for a “safety net” which could help her stay safe when home alone, before remembering an article she’d seen in the newspapers.
It was about a personal alert button by homegrown company Buddy of Parents (or BOP for short). What made the device so memorable for the silver was its bright red panic button smack in the middle.
For Maggie, the BOP Button was that solution. With the press of the big red button in the middle, she could record and send a voice message directly to trained responders at a 24/7 call centre, who would then make the decision to contact emergency services if necessary.
The device is now placed in her living room and bathroom at easily accessible locations, where she figures she’d be most at risk of a fall without her mobile phone on hand.
The button costs $169. It also comes with a $20 per month subscription fee – which the silver feels is a small price to pay for peace of mind, especially since the burden of an emergency response no longer rests with caregivers or relatives who “might not even be in a position to act quickly”.
For Maggie personally, she is also glad that she won’t have to trouble her brother, a fellow silver and stroke survivor, with her own safety.
Also read:
Yoga Therapy: How Lifelong Yoga Practice Has Kept This Silver Skiing & Climbing Mountains At Age 74
Josephine Chia shares how her life transformed with yoga therapy. From suffering severe migraines, she now skis and climbs mountains. She shares some simple yoga exercises to relieve tension in the body.
Prostate Cancer: Not A Death Sentence If Diagnosed Early
Prostate cancer is the most common cancer among men in Singapore, and the risk increases as you age. However, if diagnosed early, it is curable at the early stages. Read on for more about this cancer.
Peace of mind for caregivers
Retiree Jimmy Wan, who is responsible for the care of his 89-year-old mum and older sister, sees it the same way. He lives in a Bukit Batok apartment one block over from the pair, leaving most of their daily needs to be attended to by a live-in domestic helper.
For the 62-year-old, the BOP button is a “failsafe mechanism” that brings peace of mind, even when he is out of the country.
Aside from convenience factors like the long-lasting battery life of up to three years, he appreciates the in-built wireless connectivity and “obviousness” of the red button.
She activated the BOP button after feeling breathless late at night and was conveyed to the hospital. While Jimmy says it was ultimately “a bit of a false alarm”, the personal alert button delivered on all fronts.
"So even before my helper called me to tell me about it, I knew what was going on."
Ultimately, the incident assured Jimmy that he had made the right decision about installing the personal alert button, as it relieved both him and his domestic helper at home from the pressure of becoming a bottleneck in an emergency.
More importantly, he believes that devices like these can ease the feeling of caregiver guilt, which refers to the simmering emotional burden and stress that comes with providing care long-term for a loved one.
In other words, the BOP Button frees him up mentally and emotionally to keep “going out and doing my own things”, whether in Singapore or overseas.
For Sarkkunan Viswanathan, a 47-year-old working full-time in the education sector, personal alert buttons sit better with his mum compared to more “invasive” measures like home cameras or wearable alarm buttons.
He got the BOP Button for his 72-year-old mother after she suffered a fall on an escalator last year, limiting her mobility. It was the only device she was comfortable with, as it didn’t involve active monitoring or complicated installation works.
"So it had to be something that could just sit there and only be activated if she needs it."
Sarkkunan, who lives separately from her, sees the personal alert button as an additional reassurance in the event of fires or other emergency events.
Enables ageing in place
Maggie sees the call agents at the BOP Response Centre as an extension of Singapore’s effort to help seniors age in place, within the community.
It’s nice to feel like there are people on the line who actually care – and it’s not a machine that rings for an ambulance.
And it won’t just be seniors like Maggie or Jimmy who are benefiting from these senior safety devices.
Earlier in May, BOP’s parent company, iWOW Technology, scored a contract to install its personal alert buttons in 170 rental blocks over the next five years.
This follows a successful pilot programme which began in 2019, where more than 10,000 seniors in 50 rental blocks were given access to the life-saving button.
The BOP Buttons have also been deployed in the Harmony Village Community Care Apartments since last November.
More recently, the company won the DBS Foundation’s Impact Beyond Award as well as the Singapore Good Design (SG Mark) Award for its use of smart technology to improve the lives of seniors and caregivers.
The article was written in collaboration with Buddy of Parents. For more information, head to their website.
