Senior Care Made Easy

Project Summary

Norada's customer, a Senior Care Community, faced labor shortages combined with increasing expectations from the already limited staff they had. This led them to search for solutions to support their staff and create service efficiencies.

Working with the elderly is a lot of pressure and hard work. Caring for someone is a process with a lot of aspects and it is important to make it as easy as possible with the help of technology.

This was the first IoT solution for the enterprise facility. The initial project was focused primarily on location data. The customer has plans to expand the implementation to include further data points such as humidity, temperature, water leaks, etc.

Company Profile

Norada provides indoor/outdoor location reporting and alerting for people and equipment, wireless help calls, lone worker support, service logging, and more. They provide data visualization and analytics on the history of data collected, like heat maps and data-driven insights, to guide the best course of action. IoT software is normally for technicians to manage the network, limiting the value of the data collected. In contrast, Norada offers a refined system for end-users so they can receive and manage the data immediately. Norada has made IoT simple, flexible, inexpensive, and aligned to their client's P&L priorities.

The Challenge

As with most industries currently, they are hyper-constrained for staff resources. The company’s main goal is to help their customers optimize people management both staff members and elderly people under their care. Examples of gaps filled by a RAKwireless powered solution and questions to be answered regarding optimizing the work process:

Where are your people (staff and residents)?
When and where assistance is needed?
Whether service was completed or not?
Collecting and managing data to back up actions.
The anxiety of being responsible for others is minimized.
Streamlining of services.

RAK Product Used

RAK7268 WisGate Edge Lite 2

RAK7201 WisNode Button 4K

The Solution

LoRaWAN allows for tracking people and equipment both inside and outdoors using simple and inexpensive technology.

When addressing the safety of people, you need assurance the system is going to work all the time. The enterprise facility has limited technical staff on-site, so anything put into these facilities has to “just work” with as little maintenance as possible.

The benefits and main goals of implementing this solution:

Precisely locate staff, residents, and equipment regardless of if they are in the building or further out into the neighborhood.
Alert when anyone dwells, enters, exits, or is absent unexpectedly from an area.
Reduce documentation time by using smart sensors to automatically track when an area has been serviced and monitor the ongoing service intervals.
Provides data visualization and analytics on the history of data collected, like heat maps and data-driven insights, to guide the best course of action.
Mitigates the fear and anxiety of not knowing what is going on when responsible for the safety of others.
Streamlines service through the use of push buttons for service requests or to log an action.
Provides management the real-time information to manage staff, their most expensive and most challenging areas to control.
IoT software is normally for technicians to manage the network, limiting the value of the data collected. In contrast, a refined system is provided for end-users so they can receive and manage the data immediately.

Outcome

It doesn’t stop there. The company has some upcoming projects in mind. Onboarding new facilities across several industries for a similar implementation is on the table.

While implementations normally start with a focus on location tracking, once the facilities see the value of the system and the ease of expanding to include environmental data (humidity, temperature, water leaks, etc.), they often request to expand the project’s scope.

You can reach them thru
customercare@norada.com

or Visit their website
norada.com/

Nightshift poses the biggest safety risk for residents as Senior Care communities have fewer staff working. Recently, the management team of a community we're working with and the loved ones of a resident received a frantic call at 2 AM about a possible resident elopement. It turns out the resident and the staff searching for him were just missing one another while doing laps of the building for 45 minutes. The efficiencies from this system would have helped completely avoid the stress that was put on the families, staff, and the resident.