A "passive activity monitor" and a "check-in app" can describe two products that work nothing alike, and a "PERS" can mean a device from decades ago or a phone app from this year, because senior-monitoring marketing keeps borrowing the same handful of words for different mechanisms underneath. This glossary covers about twenty of those words, grouped alphabetically, in the shortest form that still does the job: what the term means and where you will see it, then the one question that tells two products using the same word apart.
Twenty-one terms. Five groups. One question each.
A to C: the setup vocabulary
Activation code. A one-time code a caregiver generates on a dashboard and types into an app on the monitored person's own phone, linking that phone to that caregiver's account; you will see this in app-based tools, where mail-order medical alert kits instead activate by a phone call to the monitoring company.
Ask: does the code get typed on the monitored person's device, or can the account reach that device without anyone there touching it?
Activity feed. A timestamped log a caregiver can scroll through, where what fills it varies between products: some log every room-sensor trip, and some log a single boolean, whether a screen was ever unlocked. CarePredict's own site describes its wearable's version as bundling several sensing jobs into one line: "Empower residents with wearable-based alerts, two-way voice, fall detection, and geo-fencing," on its fall detection and wander management page.
Ask: how many distinct things does this feed track, and is "activity" a device sensing movement, or a phone sensing that its screen turned on?
Base station. The plugged-in hub a worn PERS device talks to over a landline or cellular connection inside the home; it is the piece that disappears once a product works over a cell network on its own, with no home hardware at all.
Ask: does this product need a base station, or is "the base" just an app with no hardware counterpart?
Caregiver portal. The dashboard, app, or web page a caregiver, rather than the monitored person, logs into to see status, set alert thresholds, or manage the account.
Ask: does anything about caregiver-side alerts also require the monitored person to operate a device themselves?
Check-in app. Software that asks the monitored person to actively confirm they are okay, usually once a day. It escalates only once that confirmation is skipped.
Ask: what happens, and how fast, if the confirmation is simply forgotten on an otherwise ordinary day?
D to G: what the device can sense
Data Safety label. The standardized disclosure block every app on Google Play must publish, listing what data types it gathers and whether any are shared. Google's own help pages define the trigger narrowly: "'Collect' means transmitting data from your app off a user's device," and the Data safety section must be completed even by an app that gathers nothing at all.
Ask: does the label's list match the app's own privacy policy, line for line, or do the two disagree?
Fall detection. An algorithm's guess, from motion data, that a body just struck the ground hard; it infers the event rather than receiving a report from the person who fell.
Ask: does the sensor sit on a wrist or a pendant, worn against the body, or inside a phone that can simply be set down?
Geofencing. An alert that fires when a device crosses a boundary someone drew on a map, in either direction. It tells you where someone went; it says nothing about how they are doing once they get there.
Ask: does the alert require the person to carry a GPS-equipped device at all times, and how often does the vendor say that location updates?
GPS tracking. Continuous or on-demand location reporting from a device. A geofence is one alert rule built on top of GPS tracking, a narrower trigger than the tracking itself. Bay Alarm Medical's page for its smallest wearable puts the underlying feature plainly: "Its GPS tracking allows responders and loved ones to pinpoint your location quickly and accurately," on its SOS Micro page.
Ask: is location pulled only when a button is pressed, or watched continuously in the background?
H to M: what happens when it goes off
Heartbeat. A small, repeating signal a device or app sends just to prove it is still online, separate from whatever it is monitoring. Without one, a dead or offline phone and a phone that is perfectly fine but simply quiet look identical from the outside.
Ask: if the device loses power or signal, does anything notice, or does that failure look like silence?
Hybrid system. A product that combines more than one sensing method under a single subscription instead of offering just one signal. CarePredict markets its own wearable this way, folding alerts, fall detection and location into one listed feature set rather than three separate add-ons.
Ask: are the combined signals truly independent, or does one failure, a dead wearable battery, take the others down with it too?
Medical alert system. The consumer-facing name for a PERS. The two terms describe the same category, and marketing copy uses "medical alert system" far more often than the technical one.
Ask: when a page says "medical alert system," is it describing a wearable with a staffed monitoring center behind it, or a software-only app with no live operator at all?
Monitoring center. The staffed call center a PERS button connects to. Medical Guardian brands its own as "UL Certified and 100% U.S. Based Monitoring Center," with "redundant backup monitoring centers," on its alert systems comparison page, and says a button press reaches it directly.
Ask: is a trained person answering that button, or is it a notification to a family member's phone with nobody staffed to pick it up?
mPERS. The textbook abbreviation for a mobile, GPS-enabled PERS, as opposed to one tied to a landline base station. It is worth knowing mainly because vendors barely use it. Medical Guardian's own comparison page groups its mobile hardware under "On-the-Go" systems, introduced with "Get coverage wherever you go," never the term mPERS. Wisconsin's Department of Health Services defines a PERS only as "an electronic device that allows people to call for help... by pressing a button," with no mobile variant named on its personal emergency response systems page.
Ask: if a product page never says mPERS, is mobile GPS coverage missing, or just sold under a different name?
mPERS may be fading out of the industry's own vocabulary, not just out of fashion. That is a judgment call, not a confirmed trend, but it rests on a real pattern across the two mobile-hardware pages checked for this glossary: Medical Guardian's own comparison page names its category "On-the-Go" rather than mPERS, and Bay Alarm Medical's own SOS Micro page does the same. When the vendors selling the exact hardware mPERS describes do not reach for the term themselves, the abbreviation looks like it serves state agencies and policy documents more than it serves an actual shopper.
P to T: what you are buying
Passive monitoring. Any method that infers wellbeing from behavior the person was already going to produce, a phone unlocking, a light switching on, rather than from an action taken specifically to report in. Our explainer on wellness-check models sorts the three common approaches out in more depth.
Ask: what is the one signal being watched, and what ordinary situation, a long nap, a phone left on a charger in another room, would also trigger it?
One situation this glossary cannot sort out for you: a parent who wants to actively say "I'm fine" every day, and would feel reassured doing it, rather than being watched without ever performing an action at all. CareBridge, the kind of passive-only product several entries above describe in general terms, never asks for that daily confirmation, by design, so it cannot give a family that ritual even when they would prefer one.
Snug Safety's free plan is built for that: a single daily button press is the entire mechanism, with no subscription required unless a family also wants its live-dispatcher Dispatch tier, which Snug's own walkthrough page prices at $19.99 a month or $199.99 a year, on its how-Snug-works page. Treat the choice between "check-in app" and "passive monitoring" in this glossary as the real decision, worth more weight than the two vocabulary words alone.
PERS. Personal Emergency Response System, the formal name for a button-press device with a monitoring center behind it. Wisconsin's health department states the core of it in one line: "an electronic device that allows people to call for help... by pressing a button."
Ask: once that button is pressed, who answers it, a staffed monitoring center or an unstaffed phone notification?
Subscription. The recurring fee behind almost every product in this category, billed monthly, annually, or folded into a device purchase without a separate line item.
Ask: does cancelling the subscription disable the hardware entirely, or does a device already paid for keep working at some reduced level?
Two-way voice. A live, real-time conversation between the monitored person and an operator, through a built-in microphone and speaker, rather than a one-way alert. Medical Guardian's comparison table lists "Two-Way Talk Outside Home" as its own separately counted feature on mobile devices.
Ask: does two-way voice work only inside the home over a base station, or anywhere the device gets cell signal?
U to W: who gets contacted
Urgent response. The live-agent layer some products add on top of a notification: a human on the vendor's own staff calls to assess the situation and, if needed, loops in emergency services, instead of simply alerting a family member and stopping there.
Ask: who is on the other end of that call, a paid employee of the vendor, or is "response" just the app sending a push notification?
Wearable. Hardware worn on the body, a pendant, wristband, or clip, rather than something carried incidentally, like a phone in a pocket. Not every "wearable" stays worn in practice: Bay Alarm Medical's own description of its smallest device lists wearing it "around your neck" right alongside clipping it to a belt or slipping it into a pocket, which is the ambiguity that "pendant versus phone" comparisons turn on.
Ask: does the product's own marketing photograph show it worn, or just sitting on a table next to a phone?
Wellness check. An in-person visit, usually by police or a trained responder, to physically confirm someone is okay, rather than a phone call or a notification. The phrase gets stretched past that meaning constantly. Snug Safety's own page uses it correctly: if nobody responds after a missed check-in, its dispatcher will "request a wellness check at your last known location," on the same how-Snug-works page, which is a real visit requested on someone's behalf. Our guide to requesting one yourself covers what that call involves and what to expect.
Ask: when a vendor says "wellness check," do they mean a person gets dispatched, or just that an alert went out?
Privacy, data retention and consent are their own buying question, large enough to need its own framework rather than a line in a glossary entry, so this page stops at what each term means and leaves that decision for elsewhere.
All third-party product names and trademarks belong to their respective owners. Details verified against official sources on October 9, 2026; check the linked sites for current pricing.
CareBridge is not a medical device and is not a substitute for emergency services. If you believe someone is in immediate danger, call your local emergency number.