David Cox – Managing Director, Curtin Heritage Living
Background
Curtin Heritage were in the process of building their new Marine Views Aged Care facility in Cottesloe, WA which features over 120+ beds and updating Riversea in Mosman, a specialist facility for residents with dementia (44 beds). As part of this new build came a new era of resident safety and monitoring processes the organisation wished to implement to provide innovative care outcomes that also supported the organisation’s care operations and staff.
David Cox, Managing Director of Curtin Heritage Living boldly approached the opportunity to review available innovation to support his and the organisation’s vision, and began a world-wide search for the latest Aged Care technology that could support his residents and staff in the field of fall prevention and safety.
Alpha Global was an immediate candidate by offering the Digital Angel solution, a technology built on artificial intelligence and optical sensors to monitor activities of residents within their rooms to provide fall prevention outcomes – whilst maintaining the highest levels of privacy for residents.
The Challenge
Alpha Global and the Curtin Heritage Living team worked together under a proof-of-concept program to introduce Digital Angel into their existing environment, with outcomes to determine accuracy and reliability of the Digital Angel to detect falls and other fall preventative alerts such as bed exits, leaving the bed and many more.
Why Digital Angel?
“It’s giving people more time to spend with people.”
Pele Reeve – Head of Care & Lifestyle | Curtin Heritage Living
The technology was developed to prevent falls, not just to alert when a fall has occurred. Using a combination of over 10000 hours of combined human training, the system is able to generate alerts that enable care staff to provide support to residents who need it most. The system is tailored to the unique requirements of each resident, providing greater care outcomes to those who need it most.
Fall prevention is achieved by intervening during regular activities where falls most likely occur, such as late night ensuite visits, allowing staff to provide immediate assistance to the residence, thus reducing overall recorded falls.
The platform is centered around privacy, the optical sensors feed directly into the heart of the technology, allowing the artificial intelligence to provide a watchful eye over the resident 24/7. With direct nurse call integration, Digital Angel can send the alerts directly to the staff, through to the nurse call application with the ability to respond in real-time.
At no point in time can staff access individual room sensors, the platform is closed and only provides insights into room activities when an alarm is generated.
Curtin Heritage have deployed the technology across all of their residential facilities now, the deployment process was lean as only a single sensor had to be installed within each room. The process allows the organisation to spin up new rooms for monitoring when needed, whilst existing rooms can be powered down or up depending on need. If a resident, or a resident’s family member does not want to take advantage of the technology, the room can be deactivated from a single dashboard managed by the care staff.
“We have certainly had examples where we can see that fallshave been prevented, where we can see someone who is a really high falls risk has been responded to in a timely manner – and we believe we have possibly prevented a fall which is exactly what we wanted to do. This means the staff can filter the information and prioritise appropriately meaning the residents get the help when they need it and the staff can use their time better.”
Pele Reeve – Head of Care and Lifestyle | Curtin Heritage Living
Final Takeaway
Digital Angel is an emerging technology built on artificial intelligence designed to help leading aged care organisations to prevent falls within their facilities. The platform is secure, reliable and accurate and can easily integrate with existing nurse call solutions. The technology is a great example of how artificial intelligence is playing into modern and future healthcare settings, especially Aged Care which are always looking for opportunity to streamline operations and provide better levels of care.
We look forward to discussing your technology requirements, contact us and speak to one of our account managers today.
© Copyright Alpha Lifecare Pty Ltd 2024
Leave your details and we'll contact you to arrange a free nobi demo.