Best medical alert systems for seniors

Dials 911 directly over its own 4G connection with no subscription at all.

This is the device families buy when the monthly fee is the obstacle. It connects over its own cellular link, so it works away from the house with no phone needed, and the press of its button opens a two-way voice call to 911 dispatch. LogicMark states fall detection and several days of battery life on the current generation.

What you give up is the monitoring center. Nobody who knows the person's address, medication list and front-door code is on the line — you get 911, which is excellent at emergencies and has no context about anything else. For a genuine fall that is usually what you want; for the 2am "I have fallen but I am all right" call it is less ideal.

Fall detection and emergency calling on a device people are willing to wear every day.

The single biggest failure of medical alerts is that they sit in a drawer. A watch is worn because it is a watch, and that alone makes it more protective than a better device nobody puts on.

Apple's fall detection calls emergency services and notifies chosen contacts if there is no response after a hard fall, and the SE is the inexpensive model that includes it. It also does the ordinary things that keep people wearing it — the time in large digits, medication reminders, a step count.

Two honest limits: it must be charged daily, which is a new habit, and a cellular model plus plan is needed for it to call for help when the phone is in another room. Set that up or the protection is partial.

A call button and a receiver — all the help a household with someone else in it usually needs.

When there is a spouse or an adult child under the same roof, the problem is not summoning an ambulance. It is being able to call someone from the bathroom without shouting. A caregiver pager solves exactly that for a fraction of any subscription.

Buy extra buttons: one by the bed, one in the bathroom, one on a lanyard. The receiver plugs into a outlet wherever the carer usually is.

A button that calls and messages a chosen list of people, with no subscription.

This one pairs with a phone and sends a call plus a location message to contacts you choose. For a person who is out and about and wants family to know rather than wanting an ambulance, that is often the more useful response.

It depends on the paired phone being present and charged, so it is not a replacement for a standalone device at home.

Stick buttons on the walls where falls actually happen, rather than hoping a pendant is being worn.

The weakness of every worn alert is that it has to be worn. Wall buttons in the bathroom, beside the bed and at the bottom of the stairs cover the three places where falls cluster, whether or not anyone remembered their pendant.

Use them alongside a worn device rather than instead of one. They cost little enough that there is no reason to choose.