{"id":765066,"date":"2026-09-09T13:30:14","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T13:30:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/765066\/"},"modified":"2026-09-09T13:30:14","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T13:30:14","slug":"how-smart-ai-lighting-could-improve-safety-for-older-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/765066\/","title":{"rendered":"How smart AI lighting could improve safety for older people"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n People everywhere are living much longer these days. Between 1995 and 2024, life expectancy at birth increased by 8.4 years<\/a>, to an average of 73.3 years.\n <\/p>\n

\n Combined with declining birth rates, longer life expectancies mean that by 2050, 1 in 6 people will be over 65.<\/a> But aging populations are increasing demand for already stretched healthcare services and providers.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cA few years ago, the shortage in Europe was 1.8 million<\/a> caregivers. By 2030, that will be 4 million. That\u2019s not a shift, that\u2019s a breaking point,\u201d says Roeland Pelgrims, CEO and co-founder of Nobi.\n <\/p>\n

\n Belgium-based Nobi has developed an AI-powered lamp that monitors elderly residents in care homes, assisted living communities, and their own homes. Equipped with sensors and cameras, it detects when someone nearby falls and sends an alert to caregivers.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cIf you zoom in on what puts the most pressure on those ever-smaller care teams, it\u2019s falls. Falls have a massive impact on seniors\u2019 life expectancy, and on their need of care,\u201d adds Pelgrims.\n <\/p>\n

Decreasing risks and costs<\/p>\n

\n Older people are more at risk<\/a> of falling due to physical frailty, cognitive conditions such as dementia, and medications that can cause dizziness or confusion. According to the UK\u2019s National Health Service (NHS), 1 in 3<\/a> people over the age of 65 experience one fall per year.\n <\/p>\n

\n For nursing home residents in the United Kingdom, falls are the most common<\/a> reason for emergency hospital transport. Each ambulance callout to deal with a fall costs around \u00a3252<\/a>, ($340) and hip fractures \u2014 a common consequence of falling \u2014 cost the NHS \u00a314,000-\u00a314,600 ($18,902- $19,712) per person in in-patient care.\n <\/p>\n

\n Nobi\u2019s smart lamps record footage of the 30 seconds prior to a fall, which can then be viewed by care teams to ascertain whether an ambulance is needed.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201c(Caregivers) can see if the person has bumped their head. If somebody has dementia, or if they\u2019re feeling very unwell, they can\u2019t necessarily tell you what they\u2019ve bumped as they\u2019ve fallen,\u201d says professor Carol Holland, director of the center for aging research at the UK\u2019s Lancaster University.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThat can prevent an ambulance callout if nothing else is clearly injured,\u201d she explains.\n <\/p>\n

\"Nobi\u2019s<\/p>\n

\n An independent study by Holland\u2019s team at Lancaster University found that Nobi\u2019s technology \u2014 which was piloted across 80 care homes in the northwest of England \u2014 reduced ambulance callouts by 24%<\/a>, with estimated annual net savings per home of between \u00a3490,237 ($661,886) and \u00a31,487,480 ($2,008,299).\n <\/p>\n

\n Holland adds other fall-detection devices \u00ad\u2014 such as wristbands, alarm buttons and floor mats \u2014 have also decreased ambulance callout rates. But the study showed that only Nobi\u2019s technology reduced the likelihood of falling, by 32%.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThe key thing in terms of reducing falls is that playback facility,\u201d says Holland. \u201cThe staff can have a look at what\u2019s going on and change something in the environment, or do a medication review,\u201d she explains.\n <\/p>\n

\n At night, the overhead fixture\u2019s automatic light turns on at full brightness when it detects a user getting out of bed. Holland says this is an important safety feature for older people who often have visual impairments, because it allows them to see obstacles they might otherwise trip over in the dark.\n <\/p>\n

\n The lamps can also pre-warn caregivers if it detects residents engaging in actions that frequently result in a fall, such as going to the toilet during the night.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cIf Nobi knows someone\u2019s in the bathroom and it\u2019s a person at high risk of falling, it can immediately send someone to that room to proactively offer assistance, rather than waiting until the emergency call comes in,\u201d Pelgrims explains.\n <\/p>\n

\n In addition to financial savings for care homes, the Lancaster University study also found that Nobi\u2019s technology reduced the average staff response time to a fall from 11 minutes to under three minutes.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThe key aim is to prevent people lying on the floor for a long time, because that can result in hypothermia and dehydration and muscle changes, and obviously it\u2019s very distressing,\u201d says Holland.\n <\/p>\n

\"Depending<\/p>\n

\n The device records continuously but images are deleted unless a fall is detected, and care teams then have a two-week window in which to view them before they disappear permanently from Nobi\u2019s system.\n <\/p>\n

\n Users can choose for the footage to be shared with clinical teams as an abstract, stick-figure rendering instead of a real video, and they can also elect for no footage to be shared and only an alert that a patient has fallen be sent to caregivers.\n <\/p>\n

\n The global age-tech industry \u2014 products and services that aim to improve functional ability, financial security, or social participation for older adults \u2014 is estimated to be worth hundreds of billions of dollars.\n <\/p>\n

\n In the US, Safely You also uses AI with wall-mounted cameras to reduce falls among seniors at care homes and retirement communities, while Voxela uses AI-powered image analysis for monitoring and preventing accidents in care facilities and hospitals.\n <\/p>\n

\n Holland says the cost of care-related technologies is a barrier to their adoption, as is the expense of training caregivers how to use them, especially \u201cbecause there\u2019s quite a lot of turnover in care staff,\u201d she says.\n <\/p>\n

\n Pelgrims adds that some markets are particularly resistant to new technologies.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cIn the continental European market, the funding flow to senior living is mostly governmental \u2026 which means that care organizations need government funding to implement any sort of innovation,\u201d he says. \u201cIt takes a lot of time.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Nevertheless, both Pelgrims and Holland believe that embracing technologies such as Nobi\u2019s could revolutionize not only the senior care sector, but the wider healthcare industry.\n <\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

\n \u201cOne of the issues that is very costly in care homes, not just care homes for older people, but care homes for people with mental health issues or other disabilities \u2026 is situations where somebody needs one-to-one observation maybe every 15 minutes, maybe 24\/7,\u201d Holland explains.\n <\/p>\n

\n She says AI-driven monitoring technologies could reduce the need for such \u201cdisruptive and not terribly well-received,\u201d observations, and ease staffing pressures while improving patients\u2019 quality of life.\n <\/p>\n

\n Pelgrims likewise hopes to see the Nobi lamps used for more than just fall detection and prevention. The lamps now have in-built speakers that can play white noise at night to improve sleep quality, and microphones to enable remote two-way communication with caregivers.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cI think that\u2019s also our biggest challenge: it\u2019s not what can we develop, but what should we develop,\u201d says Pelgrims. \u201cThe more functionality you add to something, the more complexity you add (and) complexity is the enemy of usability.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n He also maintains that, despite the potential of technology and AI, human caregivers will always be needed.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cWe don\u2019t replace people, but we feed them the insights that they need to make sure they\u2019re on those residents that need their help most,\u201d he says. \u201cFor me, what success would look like for technology is that care is aways available when it\u2019s needed \u2014 but only when it\u2019s needed.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"People everywhere are living much longer these days. Between 1995 and 2024, life expectancy at birth increased by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":765067,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[102,2960,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-765066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=765066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765066\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/765067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=765066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=765066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=765066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}