PERS professionals to gather in Orlando

ORLANDO, Fla.—Eighty percent of PERS companies are expected to be represented at the Medical Alert Monitoring Association's annual meeting this year, according to Daniel Oppenheim, a MAMA board member and VP of Affiliated Monitoring.

“Anyone who is connected to medical alert, personal emergency response or telehealth should be there. It's for people who are serious about the [medical alert] industry,” Oppenheim told Security Systems News. He expects about 250 attendees at this year's meeting, held here Oct. 20-21.

Founded in 2007, MAMA is the only trade association for medical monitoring and PERS, according to Oppenheim. The meeting will include training, education and networking events. “We do a combination of technical training, issues of importance to the industry and best practices,” he said.

Wearables, mPERS, fall detection, and the 2G sunset will be topics featured this year in presentation and educational sessions.

MAMA's meeting venue changes annually. It was in San Diego in 2014 and will be in Nashville, Tenn., in 2016. Oppenheim is excited about the meeting's two keynote speakers. Motivational speaker Rory Vaden, will present on the first day. Chip Bell, an author covering customer service, is the second day keynoter.

MAMA is a national organization, with members from monitoring centers, manufacturers and other professional services such as insurance companies and law firms. “We are exclusively focused on the medical alert, PERS and telehealth industries because they have a very unique set of needs and services [which are] independent and separate from the security industry,” said Oppenheim.