Tech Talks Daily
00:12:33 · Neil C. Hughes, Mike Link, S2
[00:12:33] S0: And I'm curious. How do you reduce false alarms while still detecting the accidents that require a a rapid human response? Tell me a bit more about that, and and I would imagine that's somewhat of a challenge or can be. [00:12:46] S1: It definitely was. I think for the first handful of years, we had a lot of false events because the model was being trained. But, you know, if you imagine, you know, tens of thousands of falls, it's probably, you know, maybe 2023, maybe 2024, when we were able to actually hit this accuracy number because we had enough falls that the data was being trained on. [00:13:13] S2: Do you need AI agents that you can trust? Well, with an AI data layer providing real time connection within your data platforms, you can trust your agents to provide accurate solutions. So scale your business by trusting your agentic AI accurately getting the work done for you. Trust its capabilities with Denodo. And you can do that by simply visiting denodo.com to learn more. [00:13:37] S0: And how do you think the the tech should differ between living independently at home and a a resident in a managed care setting? I know you've only got the one at the moment, but you're obviously looking at both. Is there a big difference there?
00:13:53 · Mike Link
[00:13:53] S1: There is kind of a big difference. I think some of the challenges are a little bit different. If you think about in a facility, it's very controlled versus in home, you have a lot of different objects, people, lighting. So in a way, the community is kind of like a test facility. You know, the lighting is typically the same. All the rooms are the same. Typically, it's a one bedroom or a studio. Whereas a home, maybe you have four bedrooms. Maybe you have, you know, dim lighting, or maybe you have really bright lighting, or maybe you have a dog running around. And these are all things that the model has to differentiate. So I think that's the next kind of challenge is how do you make fall detection in home just as accurate. The other thing is the visual sensor isn't able to see everything always in the way that you set up in the home. And sometimes you need, like, five or six devices. So the thing we've been looking at is, like, what kind of ancillary device will we be able to connect with the visual sensor that we can... Oh, like, say, okay. The visual sensor can't see behind the couch over here, but there's Wi Fi radar mapping technology where we can see if a body is somewhere in the room. So maybe when the camera or the visual sensor or, you know, something else wouldn't be able to see in one area, maybe we could use a different type of technology to detect the other area. So, yeah, we've been looking at a handful of things like radar. We've looked at potentially using, like, robot vacuums or, like, mini drones in the home as well as wearable devices. We looked at a ring in 2025 to potentially see if we could detect when somebody's heart rate, like, dropped significantly in in home because maybe this would be indicative of all. But there's a bunch of other devices that we've looked at to try to cover spots that we might miss in a home that we could easily get in the care setting with with one type of technology.
00:15:59 · Neil C. Hughes
[00:15:59] S0: And if we do have anybody listening in... Maybe they're a care provider or work in the industry for, and they're looking for the ROI on this. What is the the business case for a care provider, and and what results show the tech and any technology is improving outcomes rather than just adding another dashboard that they need to monitor?
00:16:18 · Mike Link
[00:16:18] S1: Yeah. That's a great question. I think this has been one of the biggest challenges in growing the the business in the residential care setting because the sad truth is that people don't get paid more to provide better care. They get paid to fill the rooms. And you you come to realize this when there's a question of ROI with this type of technology because anybody who goes to a facility goes to a facility because they can't live at home independently. And if that's the case, they are a fall risk. I would say in an independent living setting where somebody's doing their own thing and maybe has, you know, a check every couple of days or doesn't have checks and just calls for assistance when needed. You know, maybe it's not super necessary in that kind of setting, but in an assisted living or in a dementia care setting, every resident really should have this because this is an insurance policy for the building. You know, imagine somebody falls and you don't get there till the morning as the facility. Right? You face huge scrutiny from the family that, oh, I pay you monthly. I don't know how much it is now in The UK, but in the in The US, it's anywhere between 4,000 and $10,000 a month. Mhmm. And families are paying this per month, and they go, well, you didn't have staff checking on my mom throughout the night. You know? So I think the the real ROI comes when someone has faced that scrutiny, when they've already experienced a family who's been really disgruntled or has had... Or they've had a fall in a facility where they haven't gotten there for a long time. I think that's when they start to realize the ROI. I think the other thing is that the less people have injury in a facility, the less likely they are to move out. And this is one of the things that we found is that, typically, like what I said, the falls aren't resulting in an injury at first. But when they can see the falls at first and can get ahead of them, they could prevent falls with injury, and that significantly decreases the the individual moving out. Because, also, what happens after a couple falls, the family would choose to move the the resident out into a new setting because they feel that the the facility or the care the care staff can't care for their mom. Because imagine you get a call at, you know, three, 4AM, say, hey. Your mom fell. We're taking you to the emergency room.
00:18:36 · Mike Link
We don't know what happened. You know? You're probably gonna get fed up on... You know? You're gonna be like, well, what do I do now? Right? Like, I've trusted this facility to care for my mom or dad, and they can't. So, yeah, I I would say that. The other thing is, like, a lot of people moving in or going to a care facility, they go there because of falls at home. Like, my grandfather, for example, went to a facility because he was having falls at home. And when facilities have something to say, hey. You know, we actually have this KamiCare system. When your mom or dad falls, you know, it notifies us within sixty to ninety seconds that they're on the ground. We can get there and care for them and see what happened and communicate this to you. It's a huge selling point. It's not like a... We guarantee every single time we're gonna get there in this amount of time, but the technology is a buffer so that when a care staff is walking around a 50 room building and it takes them two and a half, three hours to do their rounds, that if somebody's on the ground, they'll get notified. And they can prioritize that because they know this person needs help. So I think, you know, the challenge is there's kind of an intangible ROI to some extent because the ROI is preventing falls. Right? So if we're getting rid of all the falls, then what? You'd say, Yeah. Where's the ROI? Nothing's changed. There's no... Like, the goal is to prevent something bad from happening. So if the bad thing doesn't happen, there's no ROI. Right? So Yeah. The thing that we've been doing now is modifying the system to try to save staff time and save other things on on the way that that the business operates so that we could actually show the ROI. For example, helping to fill out reporting so that staff, when they actually do get a fall, they could do way less work. You know? Starting to take different... You know, we haven't deployed this to to facilities and communities, but the hypothesis is that we could take a lot of different medical data, you know, comorbidities and medication lists and vitals and maybe activities, and say, okay. Well, this person is becoming a fall risk. Right? And then we could say, well, we've actually detected x number of things that your staff might not have detected and been able to make a change that helped prevent something.
00:20:53 · Mike Link, Neil C. Hughes
And then we can document this in the system and say, hey, listen. This is actually a huge ROI. Right? Like, we caught this thing that would have happened because of this medication change and now prevented an ER visit, which is a huge ROI. You know? So, you know, that... That's kind of the the the ROI thing. I don't know if that makes sense or not. But... [00:21:14] S0: Yeah. It really does. And for... Also, for people listening, maybe considering something like this, are there any privacy consent or even staff training questions that typically come up an organization need to resolve or get in place before thinking about deployment? Any big conversations there or FAQs that you get a lot?