The newest participant in Regional One Health’s Center for Innovation Access Incubator is developing AI-based technology aimed at preventing falls.
OK2StandUP will test its innovation with hospitalized patients who are at a high risk of falls.
The project is a perfect fit for Regional One Health, where patient safety issues like fall prevention are a key system-wide priority.
Regional One Health is dedicated to providing top-quality medical care and keeping patients safe from harm, and fall prevention is a crucial component of that mission.
The newest participant in the Center for Innovation’s Access Incubator program will evaluate AI-driven technology that can play an important role in preventing falls among high-risk patients. OK2StandUP has developed the world’s first wearable, AI-powered fall prevention solution and is now ready to test the technology in a hospital environment.
“One of Regional One Health’s system-wide goals is fall prevention, so this rolls directly into our strategic plan,” said Alejandra Alvarez, Chief Innovation Officer. “It can have a direct impact on what we’re trying to achieve and help us keep patients safe and deliver better care.”
Eunice E. Yang, PhD, founder and CEO of OK2StandUP, said her company has developed a machine learning model that predicts when a person will attempt to get up out of bed.
Patients who are at high risk of falling wear a sensor on their chest that detects motion, Yang said. The sensor uses Bluetooth technology to send data to OK2StandUP’s machine-based learning model, which uses real-world input to predict when a patient has intentions of getting up. It can then send an alert to a network of caregivers within 6 seconds of sensing an event so they can coordinate care proactively and assist the patient.
Yang said she looks forward to validating the technology in a hospital setting.
“One of Regional One Health’s system-wide goals is fall prevention, so this rolls directly into our strategic plan,” said Alejandra Alvarez, Chief Innovation Officer. “It can have a direct impact on what we’re trying to achieve and help us keep patients safe and deliver better care.”
So far, her company has completed five successful trials in nursing homes. They tested the technology with 44 seniors age 80 or older with low mobility, cognitive disease or decline, and a history of fall events, and achieved zero falls over 4,500 hours of monitoring.
“These are seniors who were falling every day or multiple times a week,” Yang said. “Those falls can be prevented – caregivers just need the right tools to do it.”
OK2StandUP’s studies show the machine learning model has achieved 95 percent sensitivity and 95 percent specificity, which means it is correct 95 times out of 100 that a patient is getting up.
Now, they will evaluate whether those results translate to a hospital environment.
Randomized controlled trials have shown that technologies such as bed alarms are ineffective in reducing patient falls or related injuries and are not cost-effective. These alarms have a high alarm rate, causing alarm fatigue among health care staff. Additionally, they restrict patient mobility, increase agitation, and disturb sleep.
Because OK2StandUP’s product uses a wearable sensor, “We’re not limited by location or field of vision like video systems,” Yang said. “The patient can be in the bathroom, and it still works.”
She said OK2StandUP also enhances another main line of defense against falls, which is patient rounds conducted by medical staff. By giving caregivers insights to activity trends, she said, OK2StandUP allows for proactive rather than reactive care.
OK2StandUP’s technology aims to help caregivers be proactive about fall prevention. It senses when a patient has intentions of getting up and sends an alert to a network of caregivers so they can check on the patient.
“Our system doesn’t let you know someone has fallen, because then it’s too late. Our system lets you know when someone has intentions of getting up,” she said. “It sends an actionable alert to a network of care staff, and any one of them can respond and care for the patient.”
Alvarez said there are a number of questions OK2StandUP will look to answer with the Access Incubator’s help.
Their scope of work includes assessing the efficacy and safety of the device in a hospital setting to reduce or prevent falls. Key outcomes include a reduction in falls, gaining insight into activity levels leading to self-ambulation, employee satisfaction with technology and how it impacts their quality of life at work, and patient and family satisfaction.
“The learning here is, ‘How will this apply in a hospital?’” Alvarez said. “It was designed for use in a nursing home, and they’re evaluating whether that translates to a hospital setting.”
One question involves how the technology responds to the fact that patients in a hospital may move around more than those in a nursing home, like leaving their room for imaging or lab work. OK2StandUP will also seek data from a younger population, especially patients with traumatic brain injury, who are at a high risk of falling. From a caregiver perspective, they’ll look at whether their data can be incorporated into a patient’s plan of care, such as changing when providers round on a patient to be with them at times they’re most likely to try to get up.
“I know what’s good about our product. I don’t know, from your perspective, what doesn’t work, and that’s what we’re hoping to find out,” Yang said.
Alvarez said the Center for Innovation is excited to play a role in that process, and to bring a valuable new technology to patients and providers at Regional One Health.
“Our Access Incubator helps startup health care companies validate their business and/or clinical use case through access to a real world environment – our hospital,” she said. “We’re not only helping ensure their success rate as they prepare to enter the market, we’re gaining access to the latest technological innovations for our providers and patients.”