Origin of VEMS

Why did we build VEMS?

A few years ago we built a DIY monitor for our little boat to make sure it always had electric power and there were no water leaks! The monitor worked very well and warned us if there was a problem. We had started considering whether to market it when Mary, Martin's mother had a fall.

After an hour on the floor she managed to raise herself to a chair but this gave her, and us, a serious fright. She was in her 90s, living on her own and 30 miles from our house. We were both in full time employment and we would have liked her to move closer to us, but she would not consider it.

We wanted to help her and respect her desire for independence but we also wanted to be alerted if she got into trouble. In essence, we needed something that behaved like our boat monitor but carried out a different set of checks.

Initially, Mary had doubts about what the gadget would or would not do. 'Is the box going to record my conversations with Joyce?'. 'Is it going to record me going to the bathroom?'. 'What do I have to do so that the gadget doesn't raise alarms?'

The answers were 'No, it will not record your conversations; no it will not record you going to the bathroom; no, you do not have to do anything other than FORGET ABOUT IT once it has got switched on. The box 'learns' you; it gets used to YOU, and if it thinks there is a problem, it will send us a notification on the mobile. You just live NORMALLY'.
After a lot of thingking we came up with the name of VEMS, Vixen Electronics Monitoring System. Boring, but accurate.

In May 2018 she had a stroke, and VEMS warned us that 'it was concerned' about her. We arranged for someone to go to her and she had help within 1 hour. We do not know whether the warnings saved her life, but she certainly felt more confident knowing that she had the monitors in her house, and we felt more confident that if something similar happened we would know within minutes.

We could check also keep a discrete eye on her activity from our mobile without having to pester her on the telephone. The graph showed us the expected against actual number of moments by hour for the last 4 hours. If we saw that she had not moved quite as much as expected, we would give her a ring with some excuse, just to check that she is alright, but she did not feel that we were checking up on her. The ability to do this level of checking gave us a lot of reassurance.

Our Mary passed away in May 2019, but we had three years of peace of mind ever since we put the first version of VEMS in her house. We feel strongly that there are tens of thousands of families in similar circumstances to ours. People who are concerned about their elderly parents, frail grown up children, siblings or friends and want to provide support, but with a 'light touch'.

If you think that VEMS might help you or someone you care about, please get in touch.