Sensio AS, a leading provider of care technology in the Nordics, has joined the Innovation Pop Up at the Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust to launch its RoomMate safety sensor in the UK and help care homes and hospitals to improve falls prevention and promote independent living among the ageing population.
Sensio is set to pilot the RoomMate care technology at five sites in England and Wales. To date, the Oslo-based company has deployed 10,000 safety sensors at 220 care settings across Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Iceland.
Sensio chose the Innovation Pop Up in Leeds for its UK office as a navigable city with a large teaching hospitals trust and strong track record for spreading innovation in healthcare. Company spokesman Sven Seljom said: “We have been very well received in Leeds and have showcased our safety sensor to many different stakeholders. The Innovation Pop Up is an exciting arena with lots of opportunities for entrepreneurs, researchers and clinicians who are interested in exploring new technology in care and seeing how it can develop services.”
The Trust launched the Innovation Pop Up in 2021 to bring together entrepreneurs, researchers and clinicians to create, evaluate and adopt new products and services to transform health and social care and drive economic growth. To date, it has worked with 150 companies, identified 30 collaborations and 10 funding opportunities, and developed trade links with Israel, Norway, Spain, Canada, Japan, Switzerland, the USA and Taiwan.
Professor David Brettle, Chief Scientific Officer at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust and founder of the Innovation Pop-Up, said: “We are delighted to welcome Sensio to our growing community of health tech companies at the Innovation Pop-Up. We are helping to establish our trust as the ideal gateway for bringing innovative new technologies to the NHS market for the benefit of patients, providers and economic growth.”
RoomMate is a brick-sized device with a 3D sensor based on infrared light. It provides automatic notification of potential hazards, such as patients leaving their beds, opening doors, falling or calling out for help; anonymous digital monitoring with in-built privacy to check up on patients, talk to them and quickly determine if they need help; and activity monitoring to identify abnormal activity such as disturbed sleep, frequent toilet visits or excessive bed rest.
Benefits include fewer falls, injuries and ailments, better sleep with fewer physical inspections, less stress and sick leave for care staff and more time for personal care, according to Sensio. The care technology can speed up transfers from hospitals by making it easier to care for people in other settings, the company added.
RoomMate aims to help organisations tackle “digital fatigue” by removing lots of different devices such as fall cords, panic buttons and motion sensors that need maintaining and replacing them with a single passive sensor and a dashboard for care staff.
Mr Seljom of Sensio added: “We see the UK as a very positive market, based on the size of the country and the need for digital transformation. The NHS is a huge entity in the care world and the NHS stamp of approval would be very good for us. We have big plans for the UK and are interested in investing in potential partners as part of our expansion.”
Sensio is majority owned by the Norwegian private equity firm Longship AS and has made a series of care technology acquisitions including Safecall, Vestfold Audio, Hospital IT and RoomMate AS as part of its growth strategy.