BOULDER, Colo. & TORONTO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Connexall, an industry leader in alarm management and event notification, has been granted a patent by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for Preemptive Notification of Patient Fall Risk Condition. Connexall has collaborated with Stryker to achieve a patent on this innovative application of technology which greatly reduces the risk of patient falls and resulting injury.
Most hospitals have established protocols that identify a minimum “safe” bed configuration for each patient fall risk level. For example, a high fall risk protocol may dictate certain settings related to the bed height, position of the railings, brake settings, etc. The now-patented technology involves the Connexall system receiving both the patient’s fall risk level from the hospital’s electronic medical record system, and the ongoing real-time state of the patient’s bed configuration from Stryker. Connexall then actively evaluates both data streams to determine if the current bed configuration falls outside of the set protocol, and therefore presents a heightened patient fall risk condition that needs immediate attention by the caregiver. The resulting notification to the caregiver ensures that they can return to the room and proactively restore the bed to the proper configuration to avert the potential of a patient fall.
According to the NICHE Organization acute care hospitals average 3.73 falls per 1000 patient days. For a 300 bed hospital at 80% average census that would represent approximately 327 falls in a year. According to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality between 30 and 51 percent of falls result in an injury. The Joint Commission further reports that the average increase in a hospital's operational costs for a serious fall-related injury is more than $13,000, and the patient's length of stay increases by an average of 6.27 days. One can see that the costs are high and the opportunity for improvement substantial both in terms of patient health and hospital cost.
“We are excited to partner with Stryker to advance the state of fall risk prevention in acute care settings,” stated John Elms, President at Connexall. “Hospitals have historically used a combination of bed-exit technologies along with staff training and awareness in their fall prevention programs. The weakness in this approach is the fact that the patient is already on the move and staff too often are not close enough to prevent the fall when the bed-exit alarm sounds. By proactively alerting staff that the patient’s bed environment is unsafe, we believe that we can substantially improve the prevention of falls in hospitals,” continued Elms.
About Connexall
Connexall is a leading provider of a hospital-wide interoperability engine that empowers disconnected people, tasks, systems and devices across the care continuum. Its capabilities act as backbone for clinical workflow, facilitating the critical exchange of actionable health information at the moment it matters. Based on more than 20 years of R&D efforts, the Class II medical device software connects to the broadest range of clinical, IT/facilities systems and communication devices in the industry. Connexall has offices in Canada, the United States, Brazil, Portugal and Hong Kong and works with more than 1100 of the world’s most renowned and progressive hospitals and health systems. For more information please visit www.connexall.com.
