Alertron

Inspiration

The inspiration or rather necessity was a primary driving factor to design and implement Alertron. I would return home after work to find my 88 year old mother on the ground for hours after she had fallen over and with her monitoring device out of reach. Together, we have given up on the current medical alert devices as they are not trustworthy and have failed us many times due to the physical operation required to be activated. I was inspired to make a reliable, no touch device that censored it all.

How it works

Alertron is a wearable device that monitors physical and vital parameters of the wearer and learns and differentiates of what is normal and what is potentially dangerous situation. This device can accurately detect when a person has fallen over and cannot get back up, it can tell the difference between flopping into bed and hard hitting the ground. As this device records the routine of the wearer it is then able to judge abnormal movements in the daily activities, either the family, friends, neighbors, caretaker or a nurse can receive a notice that the patient is not acting to the norm or has fallen over and the message (call or sms) is sent to the appropriate available person to attend as soon as possible to judge the severity of the problem and further decide what to do.

Challenges I ran into

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

What I learned

What's next for Alertron

The main issue for elderly is to retain independence whilst being actively safe, reducing the constant worry. Alertron provides a virtual set of eyes that keep its distance caring for the independence and only gives a reaction when the patient is in need of assistance. This device can not only offer benefits for the wearer themselves, it offer benefits to age care facilities by aiding staff to take more specific care of each patient, whilst Alertron takes the general routinely care or 'safety' and health checks, the workers can be more emotionally supportive of each patient as more time is given to them to truly care in all aspects. Essentially, Alertron helps the help be more helpful.

Currently, we are working on the business and commercial approach as the technology and tinkering is done by myself to an almost finished product. Our next step is to publicize and test Alertron out with nursing homes, to further develop the social and business needs that it can be the solution for. Alertron should be a device that every age care facility, hospital and homes have and live comfortably with, making lives easier.