As I was driving into the office this morning I noticed a message on the electronic highway signs, “Missing Elderly…Red Ford F150 TX license number XXX XXX…call police”. This was a Silver Alert, a recent extension of the Amber Alert program to cover missing elderly people suffering from dementia or Alzheimer’s. I thought about how horrible an experience it must be for this person and his family. Then I thought about the fact that we now have the technology to make many of these alerts unnecessary. What if, instead of initiating a massive search, the family could simply log onto a website and see the exact location of their elderly family member’s vehicle. They would have a very good chance then of simply being able to go to this location and find their loved one.

Coincidentally,  I was also listening to a podcast of BioTech Nation on my commute and I heard a very scary statistic. Apparently, just a little under 50% of people living past 85 years of age are now expected to develop Alzheimer’s. When you consider that in light of current demographic trends, we are going to be seeing a lot more incidents like this in coming years. Hopefully, through the use of GPS technology, many of these incidents can become dinner conversations and not tragedies.