For senior living and care operators, balancing resident monitoring with maintaining resident autonomy is a major goal behind tech innovations.
One tech company that has been catering to more facilities in the United States, Nobi, has aimed to address this issue by combining its monitoring system with a more practical, even aesthetic lighting component.
“For us, it starts with dignity,” Niels Coch, head of Nobi USA, told McKnight’s on Monday. “When we designed the platform, the main drive was to design something that wasn’t going to stick out like a sore thumb. We really wanted to design something that was nice looking and something a resident would want in their apartment.”
Nobi’s system consists of a smart lamp that use artificial intelligence to learn residents’ behavior patterns and both adjust lighting to assist them, and alert and communicate with caregivers.
The lamps can adjust the light setting in a room or hallway quickly to help residents who are at a high fall risk. They also, importantly, quickly notify caregivers if a resident gets out of bed to use the bathroom, for example.
Overall, the company says that use of the lamp has reduced 80% of falls where it has been deployed. The lamp design affords flexibility, and depending on the kind of community, the Nobi lights are designed to alert staff with more, or less, frequency, Coch said.
Many new fall-detection tools, including Essence Smartcare’s “box and a button” tech, are designed to prevent falls without making residents feel that they are being pervasively watched.
After starting in Europe five years ago, Nobi has been selling its system to North American operators, over the past year, including conducting pilot studies, Coch said.
Cypress Living, a senior living community in Fort Myers, FL, is the latest to adopt Nobi’s tech, the companies announced this week.
“We tested other solutions, but none delivered everything Nobi offers in one comprehensive solution,” Joe Velderman, vice president of innovation at Cypress Living, said in a statement. “With Nobi, we can provide every resident with independence while also ensuring that if a fall happens, Nobi will be there to detect it.”
Although initially Nobi expected assisted living and memory care sites to be its big market, the company also has found interest in independent living communities and skilled nursing facilities as well, Coch said.
