Advanced unobtrusive technology enables our loved ones to age safely and with dignity
Advanced unobtrusive technology enables our loved ones to age safely and with dignity
Intrex is a spin-off of a 45-year-old woman-owned provider of direct care to seniors, ranging from assistance with the activities of daily living to compassionate end-of-life care. Their mission is to help seniors age safely at home. Their award-winning Rythmos® is a comprehensive safety and wellness solution, including innovative wearables, access control solutions, and emergency devices.
Challenge:
No one sees themself as old. Only a few recognize the change in ability. Some don't want to accept the assistance required to perform activities of daily living. Senior communities are filled with kind and caring staff to ensure the wellness and longevity of their seniors. The staff allows seniors to age safely in an environment in which they are comfortable and familiar. Technology can be seen as an enabler for personalized assistance. It helps to maintain the individual's dignity and avoid the stigma associated with aging. Many communities, however, have committed to expensive, dated technology that may not provide the help needed.
Communities face challenges on multiple fronts:
Technical: Aging tech, integrating disparate systems
Financial: Shrinking budgets, aging communities requiring significant capital investments
Operational: Improving efficiency due to limited resources, residents aging in place and having higher acuity
Differentiation: Distinguishing from competitors with past low-interest rates leading to the building boom, maintaining high occupancy
More specifically, to nurse call and life safety systems, senior community operators struggle to overcome the deficits of legacy systems. Those were expensive to implement but performed below expectations.
Problems include:
Some community areas lack appropriate system coverage, leaving residents pressing for help and signals never making it to the care team.
Inability to provide the actionable location of residents during duress events.
Overwhelming the system and the care team and burying events. A distressed senior may flood the system by pressing assistance buttons repeatedly, sending separate alert occasions. This may lead to delayed care for someone else.
System outages may take days or weeks. The reasons for outages may be complex to diagnose due to extensive cable runs and multiple aging ceiling-mounted units. Those may lead to expensive upgrade paths to refresh a legacy system with few additional features. This requires technicians to maintain and upgrade systems. Sounds expensive.
There may be multiple wearables for different purposes. A standard wearable to press when in duress, but then having different wearables for different uses: one that can identify falls, another for use outside the community, and another for those with memory impairments and at risk of elopement.
Coming from the world of providing direct care to seniors, Intrex understands that ensuring help requests are received is critical and making life safety systems always available is paramount - so that even if the power goes out, the internet is down, residents can receive care where they are to save precious time. Intrex knocks down the traditional technology silos in senior communities to create a single, modern, integrated solution. This is where Rythmos® was developed.
Solution:
An innovative 4-in-1 safety and wellness solution to rule them all.
Focused on improving the measuring, monitoring, and delivery of care to seniors in senior living communities, Intrex investigated several technologies, like Wi-Fi, ultra-wideband (UWB), and powered Bluetooth-based infrastructure. Partnering with an ownership group with 70+ senior communities, Intrex was able to quickly investigate, test, share, and rule out costly alternatives. Ultimately, all proved to be expensive. Not to mention the disruption to resident and caregiver daily routines required to rip out existing infrastructure and replace it with cables and wires. Intrex quickly embraced the Wirepas battery-powered infrastructure for many reasons:
No wires, no Wi-Fi, battery-powered, operation through any building material.
Efficient collision-free spectrum usage.
Multi-channel support to increase network capacity.
Self-healing, fully redundant network.
De-centralized communication ensures optimal routing.
Ability to easily scale over time.
Low latency. And low energy for long-lasting wearables and hardware.
Lower infrastructure fixed, implementation, and maintenance costs.
Strong partner network for sensors to add.
Robust documentation and support.
Every feature and function in Rythmos® came from an operational need. It solves real issues residents, families, caregivers, and community managers face. This ground-up approach to solution building ensures that every feature is useful and practical. The result increases resident safety while streamlining operations, increasing efficiencies, and providing a strong and immediate return on investment.
Many of the first communities using the solution were older buildings, often converted schools, with heavy cinderblock, steel and lead—all the fun stuff for wireless. The Wirepas infrastructure proved remarkably resilient to working through the toughest materials. The battery-powered solution remains operational even without electricity or internet, ensuring always-available life safety even in the harshest conditions.
With solid and reliable Wirepas-based mesh performance, Intrex began further development of additional products and features for senior living communities, including wireless smart apartment locks and access control readers that work on mag locks and electrified strike systems. Both allow for residents to unlock as they approach with their wearables.
"Intrex, with its advanced wearable technology, was the first Wirepas partner to have a wearable asset tracker with full Wirepas capabilities AND cellular/GPS for positioning." Teppo Hemiä, CEO, Wirepas
How it works:
Title: Driving strong return on investment for senior communities while increasing resident safety and engagement.
Communities outfitted with Rythmos® enjoy a fully wireless solution powered by long-lasting battery-based infrastructure that remains up despite power or Internet outages. With Wirepas Mesh at its core, the solution ensures senior communities can focus on three critical areas with integrated Wirepas partner sensors.
Unobtrusive monitoring of resident safety
In-room environmental sensors – temperature, humidity, air pressure, ambient light, ambient sound. Such as changes in activities and monitoring long-term trends.
In-room activity sensors
Presence sensor: movement or lack of movement can alert based on activity or lack of activity between specific hours
Thermal sensor: can designate specific places in the apartment like bed, chair, couch, etc. Show time spent in bed, out of bed, in and out of the apartment, friends/family in the apartment.
Advanced fall detection with real-time personalized algorithms.
Maximizing efficiencies for residents and caregivers
Location and proximity-based drivers
Complete location history
Caregiver time spent with the resident
Contact tracing – resident time spent with other residents
Digital signage shows information to a resident on an Alexa device only when nearby. Such as steps taken today, visitors in the apartment, friends visited, time the apartment was cleaned, lunch and supper menus and pertinent community information.
One wearable for it all – emergency support, step tracking, access to apartments, fall detection and contact tracing.
Caregivers use an app to access apartments, find residents (saves time for the real work), triage alerts and push-to-talk to co-workers.
Alexa communication and a whole series of exciting features:
Who was last in my room?
Who was in my room today?
Allow family members to record a message, video, or audio and have it pushed down to mom or dad.
Unlock my door.
What is the temperature in a specific apartment?
What areas have high humidity?
Have any apartments changed temperature recently?
What vacant apartments are running hot? Cold?
Increasing social engagement
Monitor in-apartment and out-of-apartment.
Activity monitoring and confirmation (location and proximity-based)
Results:
Wirepas connectivity and positioning system integrated into Rythmos® has been a massive differentiator for Intrex in the field. They've been able to create a solution that's robust even in the harshest of conditions. It works everywhere without building materials limiting connectivity. There is no costly installation of wires. Installation can be performed in hours. Above all that, Intrex makes these all possible for even larger audiences as the solutions are 2-4x less expensive, making them affordable for any community. With a robust Wirepas platform and the addition of new sensors, Rythmos® can remain modern and innovative, maximizing a community's investment.
The 4-in-1 Rythmos® safety and wellness solution for senior living communities ensures cost-effective implementation and dramatically improved resident care and community operations. Mom agrees.
