Methods for detecting and handling fall and perimeter breach events for residents of an assisted living facility

Inventors

Devdas, Vikram • Erichsen, Dan • Wagner, Kenneth • Heaton, Richard

Assignees

Philips North America LLC • Lifeline Systems Co

Abstract

One variation of a method for detecting and handling falls by residents of a facility includes: receiving a notification for a fall event from a first resident wearable device associated with a resident; determining a location of the resident within a facility at a time of the fall; in response to the notification, distributing a fall response prompt to a set of computing devices, each computing device associated with a care provider; and, in response to proximity of the first computing device to the first resident wearable device, authorizing edit permissions for an electronic incident report by a first care provider exclusive of a second care provider.

Core Innovation

The invention is an assisted-living facility method for detecting and handling events using resident wearable device data. At a first time, an intervention event is detected based on data received from a resident wearable device associated with a resident of a facility, and a location of the resident wearable device within the facility at approximately the first time is calculated. In response to detecting the intervention event, an event prompt indicating the location is distributed to a set of computing devices within the facility, each computing device associated with a care provider.

The method coordinates prompt deescalation based on receipt of an event confirmation from a first computing device within the set. In response to the receipt of an event confirmation, the event prompt is deescalated at a second computing device within the set of computing devices, and the responding care provider is recognized while other care providers are deescalated. Proximity-based authorization provides exclusive edit permissions for an electronic incident report, and upon confirmation associated with proximity verification, a first care provider edits the electronic incident report while excluding a second care provider.

If confirmation is not received within threshold periods, the method escalates by distributing a second event prompt to additional computing devices including a facility supervisor and, if still not confirmed, transmitting an alarm to an external emergency responder. The invention also requests activity data to identify inactive low-intensity devices and distributes prompts accordingly while deescalating on other devices in response to confirmations.

Claims Coverage

The partial set identifies one independent claim directed to distributing a location-indicating event prompt based on a resident wearable intervention event and deescalating the prompt based on event confirmation from one computing device. Across the independent claim and associated dependents, the coverage includes exclusive incident-report edit permissions, confirmation-driven deescalation, threshold-driven escalation to supervisor devices, an external emergency responder alarm, and activity-data-driven prompting.

The claim set covers an event-handling workflow where intervention events from resident wearable devices trigger location-indicating prompts to care-provider devices, and prompts are deescalated when a confirming device responds. Additional inventive aspects include proximity-scoped exclusive edit access for an electronic incident report, silencing and response-indicator transmission, escalation when confirmations are not received within threshold periods to supervisor devices and then to an external emergency responder, and activity-data-driven distribution to inactive low-intensity devices with corresponding deescalation.

Stated Advantages

Documented Applications