GTX Corp, a maker of 2-way GPS Personal Location Services (PLS) solutions, signed a four year, potential multi-million dollar license agreement
with Aetrex Worldwide, Inc. to make GPS-tracking shoes. The footwear offers personal GPS tracking solutions to the 5.3 million seniors afflicted with dementia.
Currently scheduled for retail sale this summer, the Aetrex Ambulator GPS Shoe will provide millions of caregivers the means to help easily find those afflicted with Alzheimer’s that wander and become lost. The GPS Shoe will be available through the Aetrex owned website www.foot.com, which hosts approximately 300,000 visitors per month and was named by Yahoo! as the best health care site “below the knee,” along with the www.gpsshoe.com website, and a select group of assisted living facilities. GTX Corp’s eight patents for the GPS Shoe cover a GPS transceiver module that is placed within the footwear and transmission of location coordinates to a central monitoring station which disseminates the location data through the use of proprietary software, cellular connectivity, the GTX Corp middleware platform and the secure viewing portal.
“We believe a miniaturized GPS tracking device embedded inside a therapeutic shoe is the ideal solution for the millions afflicted with this terrible disease, and we are very pleased, after many years of R & D, to partner up with a company like Aetrex which has devoted 64 years to making foot health products,” states Patrick Bertagna Chairman and CEO of GTX Corp.
“Aetrex’s mission has always been to develop footwear and foot care products that combine unrivaled technology with innovative designs,” said Evan Schwartz, President of Aetrex Worldwide Inc. “This partnership is a terrific opportunity for Aetrex to use our expertise to extend the brand beyond the comfort category and help a segment of our population that is in need.”
The impact of Alzheimer’s: Currently impacting 5.3 million victims, with predictions of 14 million US victims by the year 2050; Alzheimer’s disease is fast becoming “one of the biggest public health dilemmas ever encountered,” according to the National Institute on Aging’s deputy director, Gene Cohen. One in eight persons aged 65 and older have the Alzheimer’s disease. Every 70 seconds there is a new victim of Alzheimer’s, the 6th leading cause of death for seniors. Nearly 10 million caregivers, mostly family members, spend $148 billion a year for the care of their loved ones. The simplicity behind the GPS Shoe is that when a senior with Alzheimer’s wanders off more than a pre-set distance, their caregiver will immediately receive a geo-fence alert on their smartphone and computer, with a direct link to a Google map plotting the wanderer’s location.
Andrew Carle, a nationally recognized expert in Nana technology for seniors and a professor at George Mason University said; “up to 60% of individuals with Alzheimer’s will wander and become lost at least once during the progression of the disease, and up to 70% of those who become lost will do so more than once. The GPS Shoe is both life saving and a resource saving technology that will be instrumental in our ability as a nation to address the issues of wandering.”
“If Aetrex purchases the minimum number of units necessary to maintain its exclusive license, this agreement will generate multiple millions of dollars in gross revenues. In addition, upon the sale of the shoes, the Company will receive significant monthly subscription fees from the end-users,” said Murray Williams, the CFO of GTX Corp.
