When Jean Anne Booth's mother turned 80, Booth showed up with a spreadsheet of medical alert options. Her mother, a former model, took one look and said, "Don't you get that for me. I'm not wearing it."

That rejection became the founding insight behind UnaliWear. Booth, an electrical engineer who had already built and sold two semiconductor companies, came out of retirement to launch UnaliWear in order to solve a problem the industry had overlooked: older adults don't just need protection, they need something they'll actually wear.

The result is the Kanega Watch, a medical alert device designed to look and function like a watch rather than what Booth calls "a garage door opener around your neck." Its name reflects that mission directly. Unali is Cherokee for friend, and Kanega is Cherokee for speak.

The technical breakthrough that made the Kanega Watch possible is a patented battery system built into the band, allowing the watch to be worn 24/7 without ever being removed to charge. That detail matters most in the moments people least expect, like a fall in the bathroom at night, historically one of the highest-risk scenarios for older adults living independently.

Fall detection on the wrist was considered nearly impossible when Booth started. High-acceleration events like clapping or sitting down hard can trigger false positives, and false positives are why people stop wearing alert devices altogether. UnaliWear's approach, which the company calls Real Fall, learns each wearer's lifestyle patterns to distinguish an actual fall from ordinary movement.

The Kanega Watch has been named Wirecutter's top pick for medical alert systems for multiple consecutive years, notable because Wirecutter's reviews are not pay-to-play. Booth points to features like always-on wear, real fall detection, and direct dispatch capability, the watch can share a wearer's medical conditions and even the location of a hidden house key with responders, as the details that earned that recognition.

For Booth, the mission remains personal. Her mother served as UnaliWear's senior user experience advisor for five years, weighing in on every user-facing design decision alongside focus groups of more than 400 older adults across the US.

"The right way to look at a medical alert is the same way you look at putting on a seatbelt," Booth says. "You don't wear it because a crash is likely. You wear it because the consequences are severe."

Her advice to anyone with aging parents, or anyone getting older themselves: have the conversation before it becomes a crisis purchase.

Jean Anne Booth has been a StartUp Health community member since 2014. Join the community to connect with founders like Jean Anne building the future of healthy longevity.