We spoke to Thomas Tredinnick, CEO and Co-Founder of Ally, about their resident acoustic monitoring system and how they integrate with Nourish’s care management platform to provide a more holistic view of a resident’s well-being.
Q: NHSE have made a lot of statements about the benefits of falls prevention technologies in the last 24 months and of course, Ally often comes up as a leading solution in this space. However, acoustic monitoring goes beyond falls prevention right?
A: Absolutely! Ally was established to address a critical issue in care facilities: the inability to be aware of residents’ care needs when they are alone in their rooms.
This encompasses immediate care requirements, such as assistance with daily activities, as well as changes in health and well-being, like discomfort or altered sleep patterns. Traditional methods rely on residents to communicate their needs and often fall short, leading to missed opportunities for timely intervention.
Ally’s resident monitoring system is innovative as it utilises both sound and motion, enhanced by AI, to detect a wide range of care needs, even those without physical movement, like calling for help, groaning in pain/discomfort, being confused, a developing/worsening cough and, of course, residents’ movements.
This comprehensive approach complements observed care records, with an accurate picture of residents previously unobserved care needs, providing an objective and holistic view of residents’ requirements.
Integrating Ally with Nourish enhances preventive care by providing immediate assistance, earlier intervention for health changes, understanding root causes, and thorough investigations. So overall, Ally helps to improve care outcomes and communication with families.
Q: There are so many different sensor-based solutions on the market right now, how does Ally ‘cut through the noise’?
In a growing market of solutions, Ally ‘cuts through the noise’ in three key ways:
Versatile data gives insights into more than just a resident’s movements.
- Ally captures a comprehensive and versatile range of data through sound and motion recordings which offers a more inclusive view of a resident’s activity and care needs.
Ally is the most extensive evidence-based Resident Monitoring System in the UK.
- Through our research with NHSE, ICB and customers, we have significant data that underpins how effective our system is, showing that care homes using Ally have on average slashed bedroom falls by 63%, decreased hospital visits by 56%, improved residents’ sleep time by 50% and given carers back 30% more time to care.
Combined with care records, Ally enables care homes to provide more preventative person-centred care.
- We have a deep understanding of how care home workflows can change when integrating Ally into their home and have designed our solution to integrate as seamlessly as possible with platforms like Nourish making it easier for staff and managers to have a clear picture of a resident’s care needs for that day and whether their care plan may need to be changed.
Q: Many providers already have nurse call systems in place, does Ally act as a nurse call replacement or are there benefits in having both systems?
Ally isn’t a system to replace nurse call systems, it complements them. A nurse call system allows residents to request immediate assistance by pressing a button so it’s a reactive tool. Ally on the other hand is a proactive monitoring tool which alerts carers when assistance is needed.
This has benefit where a resident isn’t able to activate the nurse call system or they have forgotten to or even chosen not to use it because they don’t want to be a burden on the care team, Ally takes over and ensures staff know care might be needed.
The other feature of Ally which is of great benefit for care homes is that it has the ability to detect changes in well-being over time through the data captured. This helps where residents often can’t feel the changes or forget to tell staff about them and helps where busy staff may simply not have the time or ask the right question.
Q: Ally and Nourish have a seamless integration, ensuring that the two systems speak to each other which reduces the need to duplicate information in each system. Other than reducing admin burden, what do you see as the main benefit of a close relationship between our systems?
The removal of the duplicate information and the reduced admin burden on staff is of course a huge plus, but in my view, the main benefit of our system’s seamless integration is that Ally is able to help complete the care picture.
When you consider residents may be in their room unobserved for 12+ hours a day, our integration acts as the eyes and ears capturing changes in well-being when no-one is around. Seamlessly combining Ally’s unobserved data with Nourish’s observed care records, ensures the care teams have complete contextual understanding of residents needs that day, as well as facilitating earlier care plan changes.
So for example, our customers tell us how they have been able detect indicators of acute infections like chest infections earlier because the resident was coughing at night, so the care team were able to test and intervene with GP support to avoid a hospital stay.
All these additional data points and insights provide a more holistic view of a resident’s well-being. So together we’re able to complete the care picture and improve the outcomes and quality of care for each resident.
If you’d like to learn more about the Nourish Partnership Programme, click here.
