technology
‘ Falls risk’ sensor system on trial
A new sensor system monitors patients for at-risk behaviours that could lead to falls.
Keith Hill interviewed by Dallas Bastian
Health professionals will trial a new system which senses movements that increase a person’ s risk of falling.
The technology, called Ambient Intelligent Geriatric Management( AmbIGeM), then alerts health professionals of the risky behaviour.
Led by Professor Renuka Visvanathan from the University of Adelaide, the NHMRC-funded trial is a collaboration with the Queen Elizabeth Hospital and WA’ s Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital.
WA lead investigator Professor Keith Hill, from Curtin University, says research into falls prevention in hospitals is difficult due to the complexity of the setting, resulting in a lack of evidence. He explains:“ We’ ve got older people coming into hospital with existing chronic illnesses that often have a falls risk associated with them, plus an acute health problem that often exacerbates that risk.”
Hill says Curtin University was previously involved in research that explored fall rates across six acute hospitals, which found 3.6 per cent of the patients in participating wards fell. Each fall resulted in an increased length of stay of eight days and a $ 6500 increase in cost.
“ For the hospital, it’ s a substantial cost; for the individual patient, even if there’ s not a serious injury, it’ s often a loss of confidence,” he says.
Aged Care Insite sat down with Hill to find out more about the technology behind AmbIGeM and whether it has applications outside hospital settings.
ACI: How does AmbIGeM work? KH: There has been a lot of developmental work over the last five or six years to get to where we’ re at now, and the aim is to have a system that is more accurate and more responsive, and able to be individualised relative to what’ s commonly used now in terms of alarm systems – that’ s your bed and chair alarm systems.
The system will involve patients wearing a singlet underneath their normal clothing or hospital clothing, whatever they’ re wearing in the ward, and the singlet has a small sensor inserted over the sternum. It has accelerometers in it, and it monitors where the person is, the movements that are occurring, and it can tell where they’ re moving in relation to some receiving stations in the roof, as well as in relation to gravity and so on.
We have configured into the system a range of movements that could be considered risky for an older person admitted to hospital – things like getting out of bed or a chair, walking, leaving the room. Some patients might be allowed to – from a supervision point of view – walk in the room, but not walk outside the room.
We can configure this system to alert when any of those things are happening individually for different patients.
The other thing we can do in terms of tailoring – and it’ s often an issue – is if patients walk in without their walking aid. If they’ re judged to be safe if they use their walking frame, and they start to move away from the walking frame, we can get the system to trigger an alarm when that’ s occurring.
What are some of the other tweaks you’ ll be able to make to suit individual patients? Various types of individualising. There’ s a checklist on the application that the nurse will fill in on admission and change as required for the patient. A number of those at-risk tasks are, again, walking, getting out of bed or a chair, moving out of the room, moving without a walking aid.
Each of these will be able to be ticked or crossed depending on whether the person can or can’ t do them without setting off the alarm.
It will also alarm to a mobile device, a phone, and will be a vibrating device, and minimise noise, compared to standard alarm systems.
There are quite a few differences to the current systems. We’ ve also looked at the accuracy, because one of the problems
34 agedcareinsite. com. au