ASX-listed aged care tech company HSC Technology Group and its partners have received an industry grant to check the applicability of an IoT-based data analytics platform for preventing falls in residential aged care settings.

HSC is working with aged care provider Whiddon, aged care specialist Anchor Excellence and Australia's national science agency CSIRO to carry out the BEST CARE Project, a feasibility study on HSC's Talius sensor platform. The consortium received about A$400,000 in grant from the Aged Care Research and Industry Innovation Australia.

Based on a media release, Talius combines autonomous sensors that are placed around a residential aged care home with settings adjusted to individual risks to identify factors that can lead to a fall. It incorporates an algorithm developed by CSIRO, which was already tested in in-home care as part of their Dementia and Aged Care Services trial.

The sensor-agnostic platform can link to any number of sensors and delivers real-time information about residents' care needs to mobile devices and dashboards. The feasibility study will involve six different types of sensors, installing a total of 967 sensors throughout a home. Whiddon is the first residential aged care service to adopt the platform.

WHY IT MATTERS

Falls are a major cause of injury deaths and contribute greatly to cases of hospitalised injury in Australia. Data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare showed that about 42% of all hospitalised injury cases, or over 200,000, and four in 10 injury deaths recorded in 2017-2018 were attributed to falls. Falls leading to hospitalisations are more common in older Australians with more than one in three seniors experiencing a fall each year.

The BEST CARE Project by the HSC-led consortium seeks to improve fall detection in aged care settings by accelerating the adoption of Talius. Their feasibility study will explore the use of a resident's "sensor story" to inform them, their families, and their care team about their wellbeing. It will also identify barriers to adoption and impact of the technology on an aged care service's operations.

"Using autonomous data collected through the sensors ensures dignity for older people; it is not invasive like a camera or CCTV and can be very sensitive to help predict a change," assured HSC CEO Graham Russell.

THE LARGER TREND

Australia's Department of Health and Aged Care is currently embarking on the first phase of aged care digital transformation following its acceptance of several recommendations by the Aged Care Royal Commission. It was previously found that the sector was "deeply analogue" and lagging behind other sectors in the use and application of technologies. The recently-established Aged Care Technology Consortium noted from its first nationwide survey last year the lack of critical digital system implementations across the sector. 

Meanwhile, outside Australia, Fujitsu and the Wakayama Medical University in Japan are also trying out a millimetre-wave sensor technology and AI to monitor and analyse senior residents' mobility in nursing homes.