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This is to provide additional help to caregivers. “This has nothing to do with recruitment difficulties”, would like to point out Isabelle Bilas-Briquet, the director of the Ehpad (hospital establishment for dependent elderly people), which obtained exceptional funding from the Regional Agency for health to test this device. And since then, there has been no question of doing without it. Boxes have been installed in each room, and are only active at night, from 9 p.m.
They constantly record noises, but not conversations, which are then analyzed by artificial intelligence, developed by the Breton start-up OSO-AI. As soon as a suspicious sound is detected, the AI sends an alert to a phone available to caregivers, who can then listen live to what is happening. “If we had to do without now, it would be more complicated,” assures Valérie Sennavoine, nursing assistant, often required to work night shifts in the establishment.
“We hear straight away if there is a problem and if we need to intervene. »
The microphones are ultra-sensitive and allow you to know if a resident is breathing hard or is in respiratory distress.
CL
Daily help
“We go around the rooms four to five times every night. And there, we hear straight away if there is a problem and if we need to intervene,” she adds. The most common case of intervention is falls at night. Residents always keep their call button, but they do not always have it with them. “ARI (the name of the box) represents half of the calls we receive,” argues Valérie Sennavoine.
A system that couldn’t have been simpler to install, for Alexis Cerf, the establishment’s maintenance agent. “All we had to do was plug the boxes into an outlet and connect them,” he says. “The only problem I encounter is residents unplugging them when they need an outlet,” he explains with a smile.
“The system automatically sends me an email to notify me that a particular box is disconnected.” It just takes a little time for the AI to “learn” to know each resident, to distinguish what is normal from what is not, like the sound of a cane falling to the ground, “because often, there is someone at the end of the cane,” adds the director.
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A monthly subscription of 3,000 euros
The device is proving so effective that it is preparing to be deployed not only at night, but also during the day. “We realized that several people fell in their rooms in the middle of the day,” explains Isabelle Bilas-Briquet, according to whom, the system also made it possible to call the emergency services after the AI detected respiratory distress in a resident. Initially, this constant monitoring will be provided to people cared for within the Protected Unit, presenting behavioral disorders or suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.
For the establishment, however, the investment remains quite heavy. Its implementation cost €39,000. A sum to which must be added a monthly subscription of €3,000. However, the benefits brought by this AI like no other are well worth it, for the director. Especially since the company is “particularly attentive and responsive” when caregivers give them feedback by email, after each intervention triggered by the system, to improve it further.
