It’s 6pm and Daniel is about to carry out his last check on patients for the day. He signs-in to an application on his tablet PC and looks for any alarms that have been triggered during the afternoon. He notices there is a pending alarm in Mrs Grobet’s profile. "Hmm, it is the second day that Mrs Grobet does not have a normal nutrition pattern," he thinks.
The event has triggered a ‘preventive alarm’ sent to Daniel for caution. He calls Mrs Grobet and asks if she is OK. She was not scheduled for a visit from him, so he wonders if he actually needs to go and check on her. "Hi Daniel, thank you for calling, I have not been feeling well in the past two days and lost my appetite," says Mrs Grobet.
These are the type of irregular events an intelligent care system is designed to detect. The person in Daniel’s position could be any one of us: a caregiver or family member responsible for the care of a senior person. What they need is a non-intrusive system that allows them to identify changes in the daily routine of a resident at his or her own home.
"Learning the daily routines of an older resident is the key to our intelligent system," says Edouard Goupy, CEO of DomoSafety. "We are improving the way we take care of each other."
Diarised doctoring
To continue our care scenario, Mrs Grobet has a daughter that lives abroad and she is partly dependent on a social care specialist, like Daniel, to look after her well-being. She is 82 years old and lives alone; she wishes to avoid a nursing home as long as she can maintain a reasonable level of independence.
While she has reduced mobility, she is very much alert and fully aware of her environment. She also wears a panic button that gives her the assurance that she will get help if needed. Daniel is a social care specialist and a certified nurse responsible for looking after Mrs Grobet in addition to ten other patients with different levels of prescribed care, depending on their health condition, cognitive state and mobility.
Sensors such as those provided by DomoSafety allow Daniel to organise his weekly visits according to priorities. In addition to becoming aware that Mrs Grobet may not be eating as usual, he also notices her infrequent sleeping patterns, allowing him to go further in understanding the changes in her behaviour when he schedules his next visit.
At the heart of DomoSafety is an algorithm to analyse the behaviour patterns of the elderly through information transmitted by a series of sensors installed at strategic locations in a given residence. These sensors operate on battery power and communicate wirelessly.
This innovative way of providing care around the home is seamless for the resident. The information captured from the sensors is analysed and compared with a uniquely created profile, allowing for full customisation. Everyone has a very different routine at home and the system is capable of detecting situations outside of what is considered normal – identifying potential related risks such as mobility, nutrition, cognitive problems or even domestic incidents such as flood and fire.
Imagine how care providers could adapt their monitoring and service to the needs of each patient. These solutions stand out for their preventative approach. And unlike most existing products, they do not require direct intervention from the elderly person, they can be thought of as the home taking care of its own resident. This meets precisely a critical social need of delaying admission into retirement homes and possibly hospitals of the rapidly growing elderly population and, more importantly, it represents an opportunity for the elderly patient to remain at home and keep his or her autonomy for as long as possible.
DomoSafety is currently undertaking a government-sponsored project to collect data that can be used to enhance the health behaviour analysis algorithm to prove and validate the assumptions that it is possible to avoid hospitalisation by taking preventive measure and delay institutionalisation in nursing homes by increasing the level of patient autonomy.