““Prior to using Digital Angel by Alpha Global, we were reliant on traditional technology such as floor mats – but that didn’t work for us and still resulted in too many instances of resident injury and we knew there had to be a better solution out there.”
David Cox, Managing Director
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.
“On a weekly basis, we would check-in with Curtin Heritage Living and review actual logged activities occurring within the proof-of-concept room vs. alerts generated from the artificial intelligence with the aim to review
overall accuracy – we witnessed accuracy higher than 90% which instilled
confidence in Curtin Heritage that the technology would meet the expectations and vision of the organisation.”
Ryan Priest – CTO | Alpha Global
Why Digital Angel?
“It’s giving people more time to spend with people.”
Fall Prevention
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.
Privacy
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.
Scalable, Easy to Use
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 falls
have 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
