In a recent study, Kepler Vision Technologies has demonstrated how its patented care home monitoring solution improves the lives of care home residents by increasing the response speed of staff when residents experience a fall.
Residents falling in care homes is a constant issue. Even when uninjured, 47% of elderly people cannot get up without assistance, and research indicates that in the event of a fall residents lie on the floor for 5 minutes or longer in 5 out of 6 cases.
In its first extensive real-world application, the Kepler Night Nurse (KNN) solution reduced this to less than 1 out of 6 cases, significantly reducing the chances of being on the floor for a prolonged period and limited the chance of additional injury. Over an evaluation period of nine months, from June 20th, 2020 to March 19th, 2021 with one of the Netherlands’ leading care home groups, Kepler Night Nurse identified and alerted staff to every instance of a patient falling, with 100% reliability.
KNN reduced the number of false alarms that staff received by over 99%. While traditional motion detection systems generated over 2195 alarms over three weeks, Over the same period, the KNN system produced only 9 false alarms, massively reducing the burden on staff to respond unnecessarily. This reduced the feeling of ‘alarm fatigue’ among staff, where desensitization to alarms leads to delayed responses to alarms and even ignorance of true alarms where residents need immediate aid.
During a time when there has never been more of a focus on care homes, because of the Covid pandemic, it raises the question as to whether existing technology deployed in care homes is doing a good enough job to protect the health of residents.
Dr. Harro Stokman, CEO of Kepler Vision said: “Residents and families of residents in care homes should be able to have complete confidence that when they fall, they can receive assistance in seconds, not minutes or hours. No-one should have to suffer that kind of indignity and run the risk of catching a cold laying on a cold floor for hours while solutions are available that can make this a thing of the past. We are happy to be able to show how our Kepler Night Nurse solution can give care home residents and their families peace of mind, by guaranteeing that they can receive assistance immediately. The fact we can reduce the number of false alarms that staff need to respond to is so much the better, as this frees up their time to focus on their core purpose of providing person-to-person care.”
The KNN solution is a computer vision powered body language detection system which identifies when care home residents are in need of assistance, notifying care staff with simple alerts so they can immediately respond.
Where monitoring systems like motion sensors, bed mats, and wearables are unable to distinguish between a resident in need and a resident just moving in their sleep, Kepler Night Nurse only creates an alert when a resident needs assistance. This allows carers to intervene when necessary, reducing the amount of time spent checking on patients and freeing up staff time and resources, as well as reducing the disruption to residents at night.
