Intel-GE Care Innovations™ Partners with Kinesis Health Technologies to Reduce Healthcare Costs with a More Effective Mobility and Falls Risk Assessment Technology

QTUG™ Technology Intended To Help Take Preventive Action Enhancing Current Standard of Care with Body-Worn Sensors

ROSEVILLE, Calif.--()--Intel-GE Care Innovations™, a pioneer in connecting the care continuum to the home, and Kinesis Health Technologies, an innovative medical device company, today announced a partnership to market and distribute QTUG™, a Mobility and Falls Risk assessment technology. The partnership focuses on helping the healthcare and senior living communities more proactively and aggressively prevent falls. QTUG™ is designed to give a more comprehensive view of an individual’s risk of falling.

Based on seven years of clinical data, QTUG™ (Quantitative Timed Up and Go) allows both clinicians and health plans to effectively evaluate the therapy services rendered and understand when more or less therapy may be needed. QTUG™ is intended for use by healthcare professionals who assess falls risk in older adults, such as falls specialists within hospitals and community-based care nurses to help eliminate falls for residents.

Unlike current falls assessment techniques, QTUG™ provides an exact, quantitative evaluation of the many dimensions that make up a person’s propensity to trip or fall and provides the clinician with a detailed assessment of what elements need to be addressed through therapy.

“Falls are a major cause of injury and hospitalization, especially among older Americans. I believe our partnership with Kinesis Health Technologies will bring physical therapists and other clinicians a superior method of determining an individual’s risk for falling, and provide the necessary support and information in order to intervene and reduce that risk,” said Sean Slovenski, Chief Executive Officer at Care Innovations.

The QTUG™ system uses body-worn tri-axial gyroscopes and accelerometers – wireless inertial sensors – mounted on each leg combined with signal processing and machine learning methods to provide quantitative assessment of mobility and falls risk, as well as statistical comparisons against a large reference population relative to norms for age and gender. The collected data is streamed wirelessly via Bluetooth™ to a touchscreen tablet device that displays the calculated results.

“The direct and indirect costs of falls to society are enormous. However, many falls are avoidable, so more effective preventive measures can have a big impact on improving quality of life and reducing financial costs associated with falls,” said Seamus Small, Chief Executive Officer of Kinesis Health Technologies.

In addition to identifying those patients at high risk of falls, QTUG™ can be used to assess a patient’s response to therapy on an on-going basis.

Falls among older adults are a major problem worldwide, with an estimated 30 percent of adults over 65 falling each year. In long-term care settings, approximately 30 to 50 percent of people fall each year, with 40 percent of those experiencing repeated falls. In the U.S. alone, the cost of falls is estimated to be $30 billion per year, growing to $67.7 billion by 20201.

Care Innovations and Kinesis Health Technologies are focused on expanding falls screening programs for the aging population initially in the U.S., Canada, United Kingdom and Ireland.

About Intel-GE Care Innovations™

Intel-GE Care Innovations, a joint venture between Intel Corporation and GE Healthcare, connects the care continuum to the home and makes it easier for patients, family caregivers, and professional caregivers to interact and achieve better health at home.

Experts in technology and behavior change, Care Innovations identifies the best methods for health care providers and health plans to capture and integrate real-time data from the home into care delivery. The company’s third-generation remote care management solution, Connect RCM, delivers insights for timely intervention and superior patient engagement with patients outside the formal care setting. The Connect RCM application is built with a smart filter and predictive analytics platform that sorts the complex array of aggregated data captured from a wide array of sensors and sources present in the daily lives of consumers. Visit www.careinnovations.com to learn more.

About Kinesis

Kinesis Health Technologies (www.kinesis.ie) are an award-winning medical device start-up company based in Dublin, Ireland. Kinesis are a spin-out of a large ageing research centre, the Technology Research for Independent Living (TRIL) Centre, (www.trilcentre.org), and University College Dublin (www.ucd.ie). QTUG™, a proprietary technology uses body worn sensors combined with a standard clinical test (the Timed Up and Go - TUG) for assessment of mobility and falls risk. QTUG™ has been validated as part of an extensive program of top-tier internationally peer-reviewed research in Falls Prevention over the past seven years. A dedicated research clinic was established in St James’s Hospital, (Dublin, Ireland), with assessment of over 1,300 older adults.

1 Cost of Falls Among Older Adults. Available at: http://www.cdc.gov/homeandrecreationalsafety/falls/fallcost.html

Contacts

ReviveHealth for Care Innovations
Rachel Radcliff, 805-617-2836
rkr@thinkrevivehealth.com
or
Kinesis Health Technologies
Seamus Small, +353-1-716-5401
info@kinesis.ie

Release Summary

Intel-GE Care Innovations™ and Kinesis Health Technologies announced a partnership to market and distribute QTUG™, a Mobility and Falls Risk assessment technology helping to prevent falls.

Contacts

ReviveHealth for Care Innovations
Rachel Radcliff, 805-617-2836
rkr@thinkrevivehealth.com
or
Kinesis Health Technologies
Seamus Small, +353-1-716-5401
info@kinesis.ie