Long-term care homes are an important part of Canada’s healthcare system. However, they currently face a major issue. In Ontario alone, it’s estimated that by 2029, these facilities will need at least 58,600 additional nurses and personal support workers to meet rising care demands. Amongst those seeking an alternative solution is ElephasCare, a company pioneering the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and edge computing to provide a robust technological solution to one of the most pressing concerns in the care industry today: staffing shortages.
Founded in 2019 and based in Waterloo, Ontario, ElephasCare is a start-up striving to help healthcare facilities and their staff provide attentive, high-quality care to their residents. ElephasCare’s AI-powered platform uses radar-based sensors to discreetly monitor residents in their rooms, detecting early signs of illness or changes in daily activity. AI tools then analyze the information and automatically notify caregivers in the event of a fall or a noteworthy change in the resident’s habits or behavior. By identifying unusual patterns that may indicate health concerns, ElephasCare helps caregivers intervene early and provide more proactive care.
With many assisted living facilities struggling because of limited staff numbers, ElephasCare is developing a solution to some of the most pressing challenges faced by workers in eldercare. By using the latest technologies, the company is helping healthcare facilities provide residents with high-quality care while also preserving their privacy and dignity without the intrusion of cameras. When it came to delivering a crucial pilot project, ElephasCare turned to Lenovo AI Discover by the AI Center of Excellence (CoE) for help.
Chris Lehman, President and COO of ElephasCare, says: “In hospitals and eldercare facilities, early intervention is a proven way to improve outcomes. For example, subtle changes to a resident’s level of activity and bathroom habits might be the initial signs of a urinary tract infection, which could eventually lead to delirium and an increased risk of falls. However, due to the global staffing issue in healthcare, noticing early-stage warning signs is extremely difficult.”
Sensing signals
Working closely with Lenovo, the company optimized its innovative Al solution to run on Lenovo ThinkEdge SE455 V3 servers – compact systems that offer high performance for AI workloads at the edge. This is enabling ElephasCare to analyze hundreds of radar sensor feeds in real time, delivering crucial information to nursing home staff via a smartphone app. With data processed at the edge, checking events transferred to the cloud for analysis, the system determines when to trigger notifications to staff via automated workflows, helping to provide attentive care to residents.
David Ellison, PhD – Chief Data Scientist & Director of AI Engineering, Lenovo says: “Lenovo’s AI Center of Excellence is where data scientists, Al architects, and system administrators collaborate to create cutting-edge Al solutions that make a real-world impact. From enhancing and advancing self-driving technology to contributing to island conservation, biology, and agriculture, we apply Al across a diverse range of industries. Our code review consulting, along with our Responsible Al Council, helps us deliver high-quality, secure, and ethical Al implementations.”
Lehman adds: “Unlike traditional monitoring technologies that rely on wearables or video cameras and machine vision, our solution is based on radar telemetry. We wanted to make our sensors as lightweight, cost-effective and scalable as possible, and remove networking limitations by performing our AI processing at the edge. Because they do not capture any images, our sensors can track patients in sensitive areas like washrooms and sleeping areas, free from the privacy, security or compliance concerns associated with camera-based options.”
Refining results
By choosing a mature technology partner, ElephasCare has benefited from Lenovo’s specialist knowledge, particularly in refining ElephasCare’s AI solution. The team ensured this aligned not only with the company’s technological objectives, but also with its long-term business goals. Through an optimization exercise which included a line-by-line analysis of the company’s entire codebase, Lenovo was able to identify and remove redundant code, while also finding new opportunities to boost performance via multithreading (performing multiple tasks simultaneously) and using machine learning libraries.
As Lehman says: “While most of the vendors we evaluated just focused on the feeds and speeds of their servers, Lenovo focused on us: our vision, our solution and our long-term business goals. Every engagement feels like a real, coordinated effort. Whenever we needed guidance, Lenovo provided resources with domain-specific knowledge to help us.”
Spreading the word
Early results from the first deployment met initial objectives. ElephasCare predicts that its AI monitoring solution will help reduce falls, pressure injuries and emergency room visits by 50% or more when deployed in healthcare facilities. The company now plans to roll out the solution to more customers worldwide, scaling through a hybrid cloud environment that includes Lenovo servers on premise, with additional Lenovo servers hosted in a colocation data center as needed.
Lehman says: “Our first proof-of-concept deployment of ElephasCare AI at an eldercare facility in Canada was a great success. It has immense potential to help improve patient experiences and outcomes at eldercare facilities. The monitoring capabilities we offer can also have a big impact in other care settings, and we’re looking forward to bringing the benefits of AI insights to more organizations around the world.”
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