Connexall has been granted a patent by the US 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.
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.
Connexall president John Elms said that the company is excited to partner with Stryker to advance the state of fall risk prevention in acute care settings.
"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," Elms added.