I absolutely agree that the home shouldn't have let him escape - and I
would never suggest that safety ever be dependent on a single method.

Any good security system to keep wanderers safe needs to have layers
of "barriers", so if one fails, the next layer is there to catch them.
For example, you might have attendants who do frequent head counts,
keypads on interior elevators, a security person in the lobby watching
the door, a wanderguard that sets off an alarm if the person gets out,
etc. etc. When someone gets lost from an institution, it usually means
there have been a cascade of multiple failures (i.e. the attendant was
distracted by a fight, a guest let the person onto the elevator, the
lobby guard was having coffee, the wanderguard alarm was on the fritz
due to electrical maintenance etc.)

Even with the multiple layers of protection, it happens quite often
that wanderers get out - and certainly from private homes, its more
common than from institutions...and then time is of the essence to
locate them before something bad happens. A tracking device could only
act as the final failsafe when everything else has tanked.

And I agree the technology isn't there yet to really let you put a
chip in someone and let you track them over a distance. However, if
such a thing existed, I wouldn't hesitate to let them "tag" a loved
one who was in danger of wandering. On the AD ward (which had keypads
on the ward doors, headcounts, lobby guards, and alarms on exterior
doors), my MIL wore a bulky wanderguard that she couldn't remove on
one wrist for a couple of years until the disease took her ability to
walk. It was not the most comfortable or attractive thing, and if
she'd gotten out the door, it wouldn't have helped us to figure out
where she'd gone.

Mary G.