The sensor
quietcare fits a small sensor high on the wall, about the size and look of a smoke alarm. It plugs into power and sits quietly in the background. There's nothing for the older person to wear, charge, press or remember, which is the whole reason it works when a pendant alarm often doesn't.
How it senses a fall, in plain English
The sensor sends out low-power radio waves, the same idea as radar, and reads how they bounce back off the room. From that it can tell where a person is and how they're moving: standing, walking, sitting, lying down, or falling. A fall has a very particular signature, a sudden drop followed by stillness on the floor, and that's what it watches for.
Because it reads movement and posture rather than pictures, it needs no camera and no light. It works in the dark, and it senses motion and shape, never an image and never sound.
It learns a normal day
Over the first week or two, quietcare learns the ordinary rhythm of the home: up and about in the morning, moving around the kitchen through the day, settled and still overnight. Once it knows that pattern, it can notice when the pattern breaks, like a morning that never starts, or a long stillness in the wrong place at the wrong time. That's often the first sign that something is wrong, even when there hasn't been an obvious fall.
Setting it up
A real person comes and installs it, tests it with you, and shows you how the alerts look on your phone. We set the sensitivity to suit the home and the person, and we make sure alerts reach the right family members. If the home has patchy internet or none at all, we can set it up to send alerts over the mobile network instead, so it doesn't depend on good wifi.
When something's wrong
If quietcare detects a likely fall, or a worrying lack of normal activity, it sends a message to the family phones you nominate. The alert goes to you, so you can call, check in, or head over. It doesn't route through a 24/7 dispatch centre unless you specifically arrange that as well. You stay in control of who's told and what happens next.
What it can and can't do
quietcare is a safety and wellbeing aid, not a medical device, and we won't pretend otherwise. No system catches every fall, and it isn't a replacement for calling 000 in an emergency. What it does well is give a family a quiet, dignified way to know that an ordinary day went as it should, and to hear quickly when it didn't.
Where this comes from
The primary sources behind the above, so you can check any of it yourself rather than take our word for it:
- Wikipedia: radar, the general principle behind the kind of sensing described here.
- healthdirect: falls, government funded health information written for older people and their families.
- My Aged Care, the Australian Government's entry point for aged care assessment and services.