[CEATEC 2016] Being able to keep an eye on patients 24/7 is impossible, especially if you assign humans to the task because humans sometimes get tired and sometimes they get distracted. Sure, there are many ways to monitor a patient’s vitals remotely, but Ideaquest has come up with a way to keep an eye on patients without having to touch them at all.
Dubbed OWLSIGHT, this is what Ideaquest is calling a “bed protection system” that is hung overhead of a patient’s bed and uses infrared to monitor them. For example it can tell when the patient is sitting up in bed, or on all fours (they might be doubled over in pain), writhing, shaking, and it can even pick up warning signs that the patient is on the verge of falling out of bed.
We guess depending on the patient, some of these alerts can be useful. For example if a patient suffers from some kind of mental illness, the patient waking up and sitting up in bed could be a sign that they want to leave or go wander around unsupervised. It can also help pinpoint patients who are restless, like when they are tossing and turning which could be a sign that maybe the caregiver needs to take them to the toilet to relieve themselves.
The system is also able to store the patient’s movements in a log, allowing caregivers to refer to past movements/incidents when necessary. Ideaquest is also touting privacy as one of its key features, where because it uses infrared to detect movement, as opposed to using a video camera, recognizable images of the patient will not be stored. OWLSIGHT has been installed and is in use in a variety of countries around the world as well as Japan.
Filed in . Read more about CEATEC, Ceatec 2016, Health and Japan.