GHP April 2017

20 GHP / April 2017 , 1704GH01 Providers of a New Safety Standard MentorAge® - The new safety standard for improved prevention of accidents for older people in nursing facilities and Alzheimer units. A Fast Ageing Society: A Grand Challenge for Our Healthcare We are living in a fast ageing society. In Europe, average age set to increase from 40.4 years in 2008 to 47.9 years in 2060. By 2060, average life expectancy will increase by almost 8 years (from 76.7 to 84.6 years) and life expectancy at 65 will increase by more than 5 years, reaching 22.4 years for man and 25.6 for women. Most remarkably, the number of people aged 80+ will triplicate (from 23.7 to 62.4 million). It is well known that aging is directly related to increase in cognitive impairments. Dementia, generally meant as a degenerative decline of cognitive functions, mainly affects people aged 60+, with Alzheimer’s diseases being the most common (50%-70%) followed by dementia caused by multi- strokes (30%). The increasing number of seniors requires new technologies capable to grant maximum autonomy and dignity to seniors while ensuring highest safety during their activities of daily life. Ensuring wellbeing of seniors living at home or in residential facilities is of prime importance, in order to ensure maximum safety and reduce hospitalisation. Within residential care contexts, being able to centralise monitoring of guests can be essential to reduce risks while ensuring high-quality services with limited staff at sustainable costs. Mentorage® The New Safety Standard for Nursing Institutions and Alzheimer’s Units MentorAge® (www.mentor-age. com) is an innovative technology designed to respond to the need of nursing facilities to ensure highest safety among their guests. MentorAge® has been designed to maximise safety of seniors during their activities of daily life, yet maximising autonomy, always respecting their privacy and dignity. The system has been engineered, with direct involvement of staff from nursing homes, to respond to the needs of nursing facilities and Alzheimer units which host frail older adults. MentorAge® uses a 3D sensing unit to detect the positions of silhouettes of multiple bodies, and their parts (e.g. head, legs, arms, etc.), inside the room. The system can detect situations of possible risk, e.g. when a person falls or when a person does not return in the room after having spent some time in the toilet. Whenever a critical condition is identified, MentorAge® reacts accordingly, by commanding the home automation system to turn lights on and by sending an alarm to the caregiver’s smartphone. Since 2015 MentorAge® has shown its effectiveness at the premises of a number of customers in nursing homes and Alzheimer’s units. MentorAge® offers an active and discreet protection allowing caregivers to know if one of the guests has fallen down, or suffering from a night wandering episodes, or if he/she is leaving their room during the night, if something in the toilet has occurred, or simply if the guest is trying to rise from bed without assistance. Alerts can be configured for each room through a control panel that lets also operators set automatic activation times, for instance night wandering alert could be automatically activated during night-time. The Innovative Approach Introduced by Mentorage® MentorAge® rely on a compact 3D sensing unit, to be ceiling- mounted at the corner of the rooms that need to be monitored. To protect privacy, the unit can only detect body silhouettes, it cannot capture any body detail (see image captured from the device below) neither it records any image. Each unit can be installed and configured within minutes. Furthermore, no infrastructural works is required since only a power supply and a network connection (or Wi-Fi) is needed. The unit actively monitors movements of people in the room and, whenever it detects a person has fallen (or any other condition of risk), it sends an alert to caregivers, to the control panel and to their smartphone. Once caregivers receive the alert they can turn on a video camera embedded in the sensing unit to check if support is required. This is a far more respectful and privacy savvy alternative to traditional routine checks, carried on for safety purpose within residential premises. Furthermore, for enhanced privacy protection, cameras are automatically turned off whenever there is no alert condition and cannot be accessed until a new alert is generated. For its innovative nature, MentorAge® has been selected as innovative solution by the EIP-AHA (European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing). The main benefits of MentorAge® are: • For managers: it provides very high safety standards; it helps reduce risks, especially at night; no need for expensive infrastructural costs; it allows auditability in case of incidents; it allows projecting a “safe” image to families. • For caregivers and families: it allows supporting multi- factor prevention; it allows personalised care processes; it allows better monitoring of disabilities; it reduces burden caused by caring tasks; it