Skip to Content
Apr 13, 2022

SafelyYou: Get to Know Our High-Tech, Individualized Fall Prevention Program

You might know The Ridge Senior Living as an organization is redefining what retirement can be. One of our greatest assets is using the most cutting-edge and effective technologies to keep residents in our communities healthier and happier for longer.  

The Ridge Pinehurst is the FIRST senior living community in Denver to use SafelyYou®, advanced technology in memory care that uses the latest in artificial technology (AI) to help prevent falls from occurring. With insights from fall experts and real-time fall detection, SafelyYou is a first-of-its-kind fall management program, enabling The Ridge to minimize the chances of residents falling and to achieve faster staff response time if someone does fall.

The Need for Fall Prevention

According to the CDC, falls are the most serious risk to those over the age of 65 in the United States. In fact, falls are the leading cause of injury death for seniors. One out of five falls causes a serious injury requiring hospitalization. And falling once doubles your chances of falling again. Those with Alzheimer’s disease and other age-related dementias face even greater fall risks. From SafelyYou’s own research:

  • 26% of Alzheimer’s-related hospitalizations are caused by falls
  • 70% of  those falls occur in the bedroom
  • A staggering 94% of falls are unwitnessed
  • Of the 3% of falls requiring an ER visit, 78% actually happen with a mobility aide present

In addition to substantial health risks, the steep health care costs of falls are another vital reason why prevention programs like SafelyYou are necessary. In 2013 alone, falls among seniors cost the U.S. health care system $34 billion in direct medical costs, according to Johns Hopkins. On average, the hospitalization cost for a fall injury is $34,294. Saving lives, improving quality of life, and reducing care costs are all crucial goals that can be achieved by improving fall prevention tactics and better understanding how, when, where, and why falls occur.

The SafelyYou Advantage

SafelyYou is a program developed through cutting-edge research at UC Berkeley’s AI Research Lab; it elevates the quality of care and alleviates some of the burdens on direct care staff in a community. This non-intrusive, innovative technological approach empowers caregivers to implement fall prevention techniques  based on insights through video review, including:

  •  What caused the resident to go to the ground
  • Where the resident falls versus where they’re found
  • When the event started versus when the resident is found
  • Why the resident was prompted to get up in the first place
  • Whether the mobility aids in use present a risk factor

SafelyYou video reviews have led to significantly positive outcomes for individual residents and for communities as a whole. It starts with care staff’s ability to analyze the full fall pattern and validate the severity of the fall — reducing future falls by 40%. The fall video is immediately reviewed by care staff to determine if any possible injuries have been sustained — reducing emergency room visits by 80%. Real-time fall detection and automated escalations to care staff ensure fast response times — leading to 99% accuracy of fall detection — as compared to only 57% accuracy of bed alarms. By taking the risks of unwitnessed falls completely out of the equation, SafelyYou helps our team identify, respond to, and correct the causes of falls and reduce risks on an individual, personalized level.

How SafelyYou Works

At The Ridge, we implement SafelyYou to leverage the use of AI and video review to understand how falls happen and reduce the likelihood of reoccurrence. Our communities will be the first in their respective areas to use this new technology to help keep residents in their current level of care at optimal health for longer.

The SafelyYou process is as simple as:

  1. Install: A camera in the private rooms of consenting residents that only records fall incidents when they happen.
  2. Detect: A fall in real time via sophisticated AI software with 99% accuracy that ensures only falls are captured by the camera and saved to the main operating system.
  3. Notify: On-site care staff automatically when the camera detects a fall has occurred.
  4. See: The video, which is immediately available to our staff so they can quickly determine the severity of the fall.
  5. Assess: The cause and severity of the fall, identify any patterns that might exist, and review prevention recommendations so that falls are less likely to occur in the future.

SafelyYou and Your Privacy

Your privacy and comfort are among our top priorities. Every resident of each one of our communities must consent to have SafelyYou installed and cameras turned on in their residence. SafelyYou’s AI software ensures that the only video processed and saved is the video that captures a fall – with 99% accuracy.

All other non-fall video is automatically deleted within minutes, meaning that if the camera thinks it captured a fall and begins recording, but a fall doesn’t occur, that video footage is immediately deleted. Only the video of falls is saved for review. The camera features absolutely no audio recording and no live video streaming, meaning the camera never records live video at any time. SafelyYou adheres to strict privacy standards, as does The Ridge, to make absolutely certain that your privacy is protected every moment.

Creating Safer, Healthier, Happier Senior Living at The Ridge

The Ridge has always been committed to using the latest and greatest in technology to provide more comprehensive care for our residents. We’re proud to be the first community in our areas to partner with SafelyYou to reduce the risk of falls to memory care residents.

And SafelyYou isn’t the only high-tech product or program we use to keep you and your loved ones safe. Learn about our high-tech, half-million-dollar air purification system that kills COVID-19 and other viruses, and get to know our other high-tech programs like Sagely and Lifeloop. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact us today.