Need your input re: fall prevention technology

[Mr. Angel]

Hello everyone. I am a Computer Engineering graduate student in California and we are working on a system that uses cameras to prevent falls. I am hoping to get feedback from as many people as possible to help us with our research and development.

The system uses a camera pointed at the patient's bed. The camera can tell when someone is sitting up, is sitting on the edge of the bed, or is moving. Once the camera sees a high fall risk resident in one of these positions lets say in the middle of the night when there is less staff, it sends a picture to a nurse's pager. The nurse can then decide whether they need to respond to the possible fall or not. If it isn't an emergency, the nurse can simply cancel the alert on the pager, and the system will learn in the future to not send the same alert.

So to summarize:

1-Patient tries to get out of bed in the middle of the night

2-Camera sends a picture to the nurses

3-Nurses check picture

4-Nurse goes to patient if it's an emergency

5-Nurse cancels the alert if not an emergency

Let me emphasize a few issues that have been brought up with nurses we have talked to thus far:

1-The system ONLY sends pictures in an emergency

2-The nurse can check on the patient from anywhere in the facility

3-Nurses can get images on their pagers, or at a monitor at the nurse's station

4-Cameras are attached to the ceiling and can be turned off if necessary

5-Cameras can tell if there are other people with the resident, and will shut off

6-No one can look through the camera, images are only sent in an emergency

7-No images or video is recorded or saved anywhere

Any feedback you can give about our project would be greatly appreciated. Our goal is to reduce falls as much as possible. There is an industry standard of 100 assumed falls in the average facility and 9 serious injuries. If we can reduce these by even 50%, we believe we can save many lives, and get rid of these annoying clip alarms and bed pressure sensors.

Thanks!

[merellis2009]

You said the nurse can check the photo from anywhere in the facility. Now what if she cant get there right that second (as it often happens that we are elbow deep in .... stuff)? We use bed alarms and chair alarms at our facility which sound a loud bell both at the bedside and at the nursing station. Additionally a light comes on above the patients doorway. That way, whoever is closest to the room can assess the situation and check. The beds themselves have the technology capable if the person is 1) just rolling around a little too much 2) sitting up or 3) actually preparing to stand, depending on how the nurse enters the sensitivity settings.

Although very high tech, cameras I feel would be invading a patients right to privacy. Although it is a hospital and we nurses are free to enter when we need to, that patient has a right to his/her own space, just as if they were at their own home. Images that others could inadvertantly see would also violate that privacy right. Yes I understand that the images would only be transmitted in an emergency but I think privacy is a big deal.

Additionally, what is your "back up" system if the nurse is busy? Is there a way to alert a nurse who is closest to the patients room that her co-workers patient could be about to fall?

How are these images sent? Are there handheld devices that the nurses carry? Are there monitors throughout the hallway that the nurse is paged to check?

[MagnesiuM]

Fall prevention doesn't necessarilly need more technology than what we've got available....it needs more humanity. More staffing, better prescription of medications to calm anxiety, more time to understand what could help this patient not get out of bed/chair every two minutes, more people to divert/distract/tend to patients, etc....

The best technology i've seen (although rarely used because it's expensive) is pagers that page all nearby staff when a bed/chair alarm goes off, instead of setting off those OBNOXIOUSLY loud alarms that often frighten the patient, the family members, patient's roommates....well, everyone within hearing range.

Engineers, you can develop all sorts of technology, but if no one can afford it, what good is it? I suggest you spend some time volunteering on a floor in a hospital or LTC facility to see what it's really like...then you'll understand more about patients falling.

That goes for all architects, too, who to date have never designed a bathroom wide enough to fit a wheelchair AND a patient AND a CNA/nurse in through the door, and who have never designed a hospital room wide enough to get a stretcher in to take a patient to x-ray.

phew! my rant is over :-) LOL LOL LOL

[Mr. Angel]

Fall prevention doesn't necessarilly need more technology than what we've got available....it needs more humanity. More staffing, better prescription of medications to calm anxiety, more time to understand what could help this patient not get out of bed/chair every two minutes, more people to divert/distract/tend to patients, etc....

Thank you for your input, this was really helpful. We have spent over 100 hours at many different nursing homes around the county observing staff/patient interaction.

A major problem we've found is the incredibly high number of false alerts from the current clip/bed pressure sensors. After a while, the staff tune them out and we've seen it take upwards of 15 minutes to respond to a bed pressure alarm.

The goal of this project is to give the staff an image so they can decide from across the facility whether this is a false alert or not.