The Althaia Foundation, a non-profit foundation that provides health care in Central Catalonia, in partnership with Robbie AI, has undertaken a project to utilise AI to prevent falls among frail hospital patients.

The initiative aims to enhance patient safety by predicting and averting potential fall incidents.

A pilot study has demonstrated a significant reduction in falls, with a 90% decrease overall and no falls recorded in certain units over the last three months.

Robbie AI's fall prevention technology employs real-time computer vision to continuously monitor patients’ movements and facial expressions.

The system can send timely alerts to the nursing staff, enabling them to intervene before a fall occurs.

Althaia said that this technology has already been tested in the Acute Geriatrics Unit of Sant Joan de Déu Hospital, as well as the Long Stay Unit of the Hospital Center over two years.

The pilot study's adaptation phase involved customising Robbie AI's algorithm to meet the hospital nursing team's requirements.

An average of 16 alerts per day per bed were sent out, with high-risk patients receiving an average of 26 alerts, demonstrating the system's reliability and low rate of false positives.

The alerts encompass various risky actions, from getting out of bed to difficulties with sitting.

According to Althaia, the study's results are promising, showing a 90% reduction in falls, with the nursing team responding within an average of 60 seconds from up to 100m away.

Robbie AI's system has been trained with more than two billion images and 10,000 patients across different facilities.

The technology, which is based on NVIDIA Jetson's Edge AI platform, ensures patient privacy by not retaining images or data.

Althaia Foundation Social and Health Innovation head Bartomeu Ayala said:  “In this pilot, one of the most conclusive results has been the low number of false positives. Robbie AI is the only solution that intelligently distinguishes a real risk of falling, and this is crucial for the nursing team that manages many daily alerts.”

Robbie AI CEO and co-founder Karen Marquez said: “Althaia's commitment to patient safety makes them an ideal partner for Robbie AI. Their continued efforts to refine fall prevention workflows with Robbie AI's solution have allowed us to achieve results that can be extended to other centres.”