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Targeting Elderly Needing Help by GPS
The Mature Market.com
Japan
February 1, 2005
Secom Co. runs a 24-hours-a-day, 365-days-a-year service providing positional information on elderly people through GPS (Global Positioning System) satellites and mobile-phone base stations and going to their assistance in an emergency.
Elderly people can sometimes lose their bearings when out and about. This service provides them with a miniature terminal to be carried with them wherever they go so that they can be located if they get into difficulty.
Their families are able to ascertain their position online via a mobile phone or PC Internet connection. In addition, when requested by the family, Secom's emergency personnel can hurry to where a lost person is and help them out. The service is attractively priced, with a one-off payment of ¥7,000 ($54) to join the scheme and cover the cost of the necessary equipment and a fee of ¥500 ($3.85) per month after that.
GPS signals often cannot be received when indoors or in moving cars. But this system operates even in such situations, by using signals from mobile-phone base stations. It can locate people with an accuracy of 20 to 50 meters in built-up city areas and as low as 5 meters in suburban areas.
About Secom.Co by CEO Kiyomasa Sugii
Since our establishment in 1962, Secom has been the leading provider of security services in Japan. While security remains as our core business, we have expanded our service portfolio to encompass communications, education, medical welfare, insurance and geographical information services.
There is only one guiding principle, to develop and offer useful and reliable services to accommodate the needs of our customers so that, without Secom, they would feel inconvenienced and insecure. This is what we call the "Social System Industry".
Secom Intelligent Systems (IS) Laboratory strives to experiment with services and products in order to realize this "Social System Industry." We begin a research project, not limited by available technology, but rather by clearly defining a new service that can satisfy our customers.
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