New Freedom through Medical Devices Based on the Global System for Mobile Communications: A Prospective Survey of 620 Users of the Swiss Limmex Emergency Wristwatch-An Original Study from Switzerland

About 500,000 elderly people in Switzerland suffer a fall each year. Thus medical attention and help are essential for these people, who mostly live alone without a caregiver. Only 3% of people aged over 65 in Switzerland use an emergency system. Personal telehealth devices allow patients to receive enough information about the appropriate treatment, as well as followup with their doctors and reports of any emergency, in the absence of any caregiver. This increases their quality of life in a cost-effective fashion. "Limmex"-a new medical emergency watch-was launched in Switzerland in 2011 and has been a great commercial success. In this paper, we give a brief review of this watch technology, along with the results of a survey of 620 users conducted by the Department of Emergency Medicine in Bern.