Many new monitoring tools within senior living communities are designed to warn caregivers when residents are at risk for a health emergency.
A new warning, however — just in time for Valentine’s Day — tells staff members when residents are at risk for suffering from matters closer to the heart.
Accushield’s new “love meter” adds an isolation score to residents who are flagged for possible social disconnectedness.
The score will come up on Accushield’s kiosk software platform and bases the score on a number of engagement factors, including how many visitations a resident gets and how actively he or she engages in on-site activities, the company announced Tuesday.
Rather than simply warning caregivers about a resident’s isolation, the new tool also tries to match those older adults with volunteers from Accushield’s “ProjectLoveMeter” network who share similar likes and interests, the company explained.
The network, which can include other residents within a senior living community, currently is composed of 1.6 million volunteers, which also includes outside community members such as university students or churchgoers, Accushield touted, adding that the volunteers undergo some kind of credentialing process to be part of the love meter network.
“ProjectLoveMeter harnesses the power of visitation data that would otherwise be lost on paper to pinpoint resident loneliness and isolation risks,” TK King, vice president of healthcare strategy at Accushield, said in a statement. “When you couple this kind of innovation with a robust volunteer matching program, you have a solution that not only addresses resident needs but also creates a new pool of resources for an already strained workforce.”
Accushield recently won Gold in the Tech Partner of the Year category of the Senior Living track of the 2023 McKnight’s Excellence in Technology awards, for its Flex workforce platform.
Without a love meter, some senior living providers have turned to other tech-based options. Artificial intelligence or robotic companions, such as robo-pets, have helped address older aduts’ feelings of social isolation, either at home in the greater community or in congregate settings.
