MONTREAL — Telus Health is expanding its LivingWell Companion personal emergency response service (PERS) with the acquisition of Quebec-based DirectAlert, which now makes Telus the largest Canadian-owned PERS provider, the company announced Wednesday.
The Telus LivingWell Companion service is designed to support the 85% of Canadian seniors who report they want to age in their own homes, while also offering peace of mind to their family and loved ones with the assurance of safety and security.
DirectAlert will continue providing service under the new DirectAlert by Telus Health brand into early 2020, ensuring a smooth transition for current customers so they can continue to receive the same consistent, uninterrupted local emergency response experience they’re used to, Telus said in a news release. By early next year, all Telus PERS customers will be served by the LivingWell Companion brand nationally and will be supported by increased service capabilities, including multilingual support and proactive alerting, Telus said.
“In the next ten years, seniors in Canada will make up nearly a quarter of our population in Canada and require considerable support from our healthcare system and their caregivers,” said Juggy Sihota, vice-president of consumer health for Telus, in the news release. “By leveraging the power of technology we can deliver innovative digital tools, such as virtual care or wearable fall detection devices like LivingWell Companion, providing the support and dignity needed to live independently at home for longer while maintaining the freedom to live life to its fullest focusing on the activities they love, while knowing they can still get the help they need in the event of a fall or emergency.”
According to research conducted by HomeStar and the Canadian Association for Retired Persons (CARP) in 2017, 85% of seniors reported they wanted to age in their homes. In addition, past Statistics Canada research has shown that falls are the most common cause of injury among older Canadians — about one in three seniors aged 65 and older fall at least once every year.
The Telus LivingWell Companion Home service, with an optional fall detection feature, provides instant access to emergency assistance 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and allows users to speak live with a trained operator in the event of an emergency, who can assess the situation and contact loved ones and/or alert emergency personnel to dispatch help right away. The LivingWell Companion Go service features built-in GPS location tracking and automatic fall detection in the user’s wearable health device, providing support to active seniors anywhere in Canada there is cellular coverage.
More information about the suite of Telus LivingWell Companion services can be found at telus.com/livingwell. More information about DirectAlert by Telus Health can be found at DirectAlert.ca/telus.
