Philips Lifeline, Royal Philips' personal emergency response system (PERS) division, has officially launched its HomeSafe cellular PERS, which it quietly rolled out a few months ago.

"The HomeSafe Wireless offering addresses the needs of our seniors who do benefit from in-home PERS but have increasingly begun to drop their landlines, which means they were not able to be served with PERS in their home," Carlos Muchiutti, Senior Director of Global Product Management for Philips Lifeline told MobiHealthNews.

Muchiutti said that seniors are dropping their landlines in favor of mobile phones at rates that track with the overall population, and so far sales of HomeSafe have mirrored that trend.

The device includes a cellular base station with connectivity provided by AT&T or one of its local partners. It also includes a help button worn as a pendant, and can optionally include Philips' AutoAlert, a service that uses an accelerometer to automatically contact a LifeLine call system in the event of a fall or a long period of inaction. 

HomeSafe pricing will differ based on location, according to Philips, but will generally be around $41.95 per month for the basic service and $56.95 per month with AutoAlert.

"We made a significant investment in understanding how to create a solution that fits the lifestyle and the needs of our seniors," Muchiutti said. "And the design is very slick. We have already received sufficient feedback from our customer base -- including our channel partners and our installers -- that talk about the satisfaction people have with having this new device in their homes."

Despite the cellular connection, HomeSafe is not an mPERS device. In fact, despite announcing its GoSafe mPERS at CES 2013 (with a forecasted launch of March 2013), Philips still doesn't have an mPERS in the market.

"The [HomeSafe] design is intended for home use," Muchiutti said. "There are many aspects of the design itself that would confine it to use in the home. To get the right and optimal coverage, it is tended to be installed, tested, and then to be left there as a static solution to provide the right level of care and connectivity in case the senior needs help."

Muchiutti said that GoSafe is in the final stages of testing, but declined to give a new expected launch date.