A deathwatch facility was a home for elderly people on Kaelon II before the system of the Resolution was adopted by the Kaelon species. Fifteen or twenty centuries before the 24th century, when the Resolution didn't exist yet, old people, as their health failed and when they could no longer be cared for by their families and became invalids, were put away in deathwatch facilities, where they "simply waited in loneliness for the end to come" often for several years. Those institutions became obsolete when the Resolution was adopted. (TNG: "Half a Life" )