Medical alert jewelry: Encyclopedia - Medical alert jewelry
Medical alert jewelry
Medical ID jewelry provides valuable information about personal medical conditions in time of emergency. Medical ID jewelry is worn by many people with diabetes, allergies to foods or medications, or other conditions affecting health care. They enable medical professionals to know about these conditions when the person is unable to communicate.
Bracelets are the most common type of jewelry, but necklace pendants are also used. There are three types of medical ID jewelry. The most common form of medical ID jewelry provides a logo or inscription indicating a particular well known medical condition.
Another type of medical ID jewelry indicates membership in a medical information organization such as the MedicAlert Foundation, MedicAlert.org. Such medical ID jewelry includes a member identification number and a toll-free number for medical emergency personnel to contact the organization and obtain full information about the wearer's medical conditions, treatment, and history.
A third type of medical jewelry is a pendant or wrist strap containing a wireless alert button, also known as a panic button, worn in the home as part of a wireless medical alert system. This type of medical jewelry sends a signal to a dialing console which contacts a medical alarm monitoring service when an emergency occurs.
One indicator of the widespread use of medical jewelry can be found in the outcome of a decision to assign new telephone area codes in the California Central Valley. Originally, the city of Turlock - home to the MedicAlert Foundation - was to receive a new area code different from its original assignment of "209". But the California Public Utilities Commission heard strong testimony that this would lead to future communications problems among the millions of world-wide MedicAlert members and decided to re-map the new area codes to retain Turlock within area code 209 and avoid such problems. (The foundation, of course, has a toll-free number but the 209 number must still be used outside the United States.)
 Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Medical alert jewelry", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki | 
