An AI-powered lamp has reduced the number of falls in a care home in Cumbria by 84%, with the added benefit of a significant, 28-fold increase in response time when a fall occurs.
The Nobi Smart Lamp is an AI powered piece of agetech that is revolutionising fall detection and prevention in care homes in Europe, the US, New Zealand and now in the UK too.
The technology has been in use since May this year as part of a pilot that is being funded by NHS Lancashire and South Cumbria Integrated Care Board (ICB) at Hartland House in Cumbria. The lamps are already having a significant impact on the lives of residents and care staff.
Nobi Lamps detect 100% of falls and offer preventative measures that have led to a huge reduction in falls at Hartland House. 62% of falls happen at night. To respond to this, when a resident sits upright in bed at night Nobi will shine soft light upwards to gently illuminate the room. Then if the person stands up, to go to the bathroom, for example, the smart lamp will illuminate the entire room.
Further to this, preventative alerts can be set up for frequent fallers to let care staff know when they sit up in bed. This means that carers can reach the resident before they attempt to get out of bed unaided. This way, Nobi helps care staff with a small, human intervention at the right moment to prevent falls that could have potentially huge life-threatening impacts.
The final piece of the puzzle is fall analysis. Should a fall occur the lamp sends care staff an abstract stick figure image of the resident’s position in the room and captures the 15 seconds of footage preceding and following the fall. Using this information the system can illuminate the cause of falls, empowering staff with the knowledge that they need to implement preventative strategies.
Building a clear picture
In order to prevent falls in care homes, first we need a full clear picture of the number of falls that are occurring, and the causes.
Academic research indicates that when the oldest elderly fall and cannot get up independently, only 20% manage to use a traditional nurse call system for help. At Hartland House, the statistics aligned with academic findings, with 82% of the elderly residents unable to use the nurse call system. This means that if a resident falls in the night and cannot call for help they could be on the floor until care staff make their scheduled rounds to check on them. This could be anything up to 2 hours.
Rapid response to a fall can be life-saving. The Nobi lamp detects 100% of falls and alerts care staff immediately. This has led to a huge reduction in the average response time at Hartland House, falling from 57 minutes to under 2 minutes.
Deborah Gent, adult social care digital lead for NHS Lancashire and South Cumbria ICB said: “We have been very happy with preliminary results from the pilot programme with Hartland House and the Nobi lamps. Seeing the impact that this technology could have on our elderly population, and the health service in the region, is really exciting and we look forward to working with Nobi in the future to help our elderly population.”
Speaking about the impact of falls, Nobi CEO, Roeland Pelgrims said, “Falls are the biggest cause of hospitalisation in the elderly so they are already a huge issue, causing a massive burden on the NHS. Nobi aims to revolutionise the sector by dramatically reducing falls in care homes and eliminating long lie falls completely. Agetech has a role to play in arming care staff with the information they need to make informed, proactive decisions to support their residents and keep them living well.”