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Fujitsu, Wakayama Medical University start joint trials for millimeter-wave sensor to detect falls of elderly patients

4 Comments

Fujitsu and Wakayama Medical University have announced the start of joint trials of a technology to support nurses and caregivers in visually monitoring patients in privacy-sensitive contexts, including hospital rooms and nursing facilities.

The technology leverages Fujitsu's technique for accurately estimating postures of the human body using a millimeter-wave sensor and Fujitsu's "Actlyzer" AI technology for analysis of complex human behaviors. Using a millimeter-wave sensor to gather point cloud data and no cameras, Fujitsu said the technology will help to support nurses and caregivers to monitor patients and achieve a faster response to emergency situations including falls and possible serious injuries while ensuring patients' privacy.

Fujitsu will analyze data obtained through the trials and further refine its technology based on analysis results evaluated by Wakayama Medical University, drawing on the Wakayama Medical University's knowledge from the medical field.

Based on these results, the two parties aim to offer a millimeter-wave sensor service for privacy-conscious monitoring to hospitals and nursing facilities in fiscal 2023.

In fiscal 2021, the Japan Hospital Association reported a total of 290 falls per month at 18 hospitals in Japan. Although these numbers highlight the risk of falls and injuries of elderly people and the need for patient monitoring, monitoring technologies using cameras remain difficult to install in highly private spaces such as hospitals and nursing homes.

To address this challenge, Fujitsu and Wakayama Medical University started joint trials at actual facilities for the elderly to contribute to reducing the risk of serious injuries such as bone fractures by supporting nurses and caregivers in monitoring patients and achieving a faster response to emergency situations while ensuring patients' privacy.

Source: Fujitsu

© JCN Newswire

©2024 GPlusMedia Inc.

4 Comments
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Speak for yourselves! Most Japanese/Asian Elderly are way fitter than their Western Counterparts.

@GBR48 - Euthanasia sounds to me, what you're promoting... anyone over 50 right ?

@wallace - more younger people break bones than elderly ones, especially when considering the skiing/snowboarding community.... I guess the older ones, are just smarter...

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When you get old you get frail and your bones become more fragile. Basic bodily functions become difficult and often painful. You may also lose control over some of them. This often begins in your 50s and just gets worse. Arthritis and rheumatism can make any movement painful, so government imposed exercise would be torture for many. Your eyesight may degrade as well as your teeth, hearing, memory and other cognitive faculties. There are a host of other conditions that accompany old age, such as oedema and tinnitus. Society often ignores the needs of older people as it is doing with the move to apps, which many elderly people find difficult or impossible to cope with. Isolation is common. Your finances may be gutted or sequestrated if you require care. Abuse of the elderly by carers is not unusual, as caring is a low paid job. And you will be reliant on others as your mobility and balance declines. Even cutting your own toenails may become impossible.

Hospital care that reduces the pain and discomfort of the elderly is not a waste of money. When you get old, you may find you agree. I suspect old age is more painful in Japan, where opiate-based painkillers are not available OTC.

It is perhaps the best example of enlightened self-interest to not smoke, to moderate your diet and to exercise regularly when younger, so that you do not enter old age overweight or in poorer health than you might be.

The only alternative to the horrors of old age is of course worse - dying young.

-2 ( +0 / -2 )

Elderly people have fragile bones that easily break.

-1 ( +1 / -2 )

I really hope, when I get older, that I'm not so frail.

A lot of older people are so thin you can see the outline of their bones through their thin skins - Muscle degradation is something common to this, and I believe it happens after people start becoming inactive \ stop working - and leading a sedentary lifestyle. It would be far better, for the Government to focus upon creating activities for the Elder generations to avoid this wasting away lifestyle - which ultimately leads to a waste of Hospital resources...

1 ( +1 / -0 )

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