Lifeline is probably the oldest medical alert system provider in the country. It was founded in 1972 and quickly became the predominant medic alert system company by the late 1970’s. In early 2006 Philips Electronics acquired Lifeline and that’s when things may have changed. Philips Electronics is multinational Dutch electronics company that is likely most famous for its role in manufacturing medical equipment like computerized axial tomography imaging devices (CAT scanners). Prior to the acquisition Lifeline was publicly traded but it had only one mission … to provide medical alert systems and services. Now, as a part of the Dutch electronics conglomerate, it seems as though the medical alert system component may have lost some of it’s early luster. As far as we can tell Lifeline is no longer the biggest player in the medic alert arena. That distinction probably goes to one of the internet markets … we know, “say it ain’t so”.
While Lifeline is no longer an American company, it still offers all of the medical alert system technology that Vital-Link does, such as: Landline and Cellular medical alerts systems, Mobile medical alert devices and Fall Detection that can be coupled with any of the above referenced technologies. According to the most Consumer Report article we could find, Lifeline’s monitoring center is not UL listed. For us her at Vital-Link, that raises some red flags.
Life Alert systems is another common name in the emergency response system world. While Lifeline is a publicly traded company, Life Alert remains privately held. Its corporate headquarters are located in Southern California but Life Alert is still able to provide service for the entire country.
Life Alert, like Vital-Link and Lifeline offers the above-mentioned panoply of medical alert system technology.
Lifeline and Life Alert can handle a medical alarm just fine. However, after visiting Life Alert’s website, we could not find any costs for their medic alert systems. It may be, for some reason, they do not want to disclose their prices. As of this writing, the only way to get more information or to place an order is to actually call them. What is Life Alert hiding? Why can’t somebody place an order on line? Could one of the reasons that Life Alert does not show its prices on line be … their prices are too high? Life Alert appears to require a three-year contract, if this is true then more red flags need to be raised.
AARP and its Logo are Registered Trademarks of American Association of Retired Person
Life Alert ® is a registered trademark of Life Alert Emergency Response, Inc.
Lifeline ® is a registered trademark of Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V.
MedicAlert ® is a U.S. registered trademark and service mark of MedicAlert Foundation