Middle East Health speaks to Christl Lauterbach, CEO of Future Shape, about their innovative Sensfloor that can be used to track patient movements and provide alerts if a patient falls as well as many other ingenious uses.
CEO of Future Shape
Middle East Health: SensFloor is a floor underlay that makes the floor sensitive to patient movements in hospitals and nursing homes. Can you explain what SensFloor is exactly?
Christl Lauterbach: SensFloor is a large-area sensor underlay. It is installable beneath nearly any kind of flooring and is invisible and discreet.
Middle East Health: What is it made of?
Christl Lauterbach: It is made of a metallized polyester fleece with an overall thickness of 2.5 mm, featuring integrated sensors and radio modules.
Middle East Health: How does it work?
Christl Lauterbach: SensFloor is based on a capacitive proximity measurement, quite similar to the touch screen of a mobile phone. Persons walking across the floor trigger signals which are sent wirelessly to a transceiver which uses intelligent algorithms to identify different situations and trigger events or alarms, accordingly. This system can calculate the number of persons on the floor, their direction and speed. Further, it possesses a very high reliability in fall detection. Several standardinterfaces are available for client-specific data analysis infrastructure, indoor call systems, and home automation systems.
Middle East Health: What are some of the main uses of SensFloor?
Christl Lauterbach: SensFloor offers a variety ofapplications in health care, Ambient Assisted Living, home automation, retail, security and multimedia.
In health care it is used to optimize workflows, by indicating movements in hospital or nursing rooms, where people with a high risk of falling are living. Falls are prevented, when the nurses can rush to help before a fall occurs. For home care and assisted living scenarios SensFloor offers safety, because falls or longer inactivity will lead to emergency alerts to avoid a person lying helplessly alone for a long time.
Middle East Health: Reading some of the literature about SensFloor – it is noted that it can be installed under various types of floors, such as carpet, vinyl, wood and even stone tiles. How can it be sensitive through stone tiles?
Christl Lauterbach: The reason is the measurement principle, which is not pressure-based, as explained before but proximity sensing like a touch pad. It is sensitive against electrically conductive materials, including liquids.
Middle East Health: The company Future-Shape was set up in 2005 to develop SensFloor. Can you tell us a bit about Future-Shape?
Christl Lauterbach: Future-Shape is located near Munich in Germany. I founded the company and it is privately owned. Future-Shape has many years of experience in material science, sensor technology, and radio systems. Its main product is SensFloor. Future-Shape develops leading edge algorithms for data analysis, that will be extended towards selflearning systems and artificial intelligence in future applications. All products are developed and made in Germany.
Middle East Health: When was SensFloor developed and first used commercially?
Christl Lauterbach: The SensFloor was developed by Future-Shape starting in 2005 and first installed in a large project – a nursing home with 70 rooms, including bathrooms – in 2012 in France. At that time the fall detection and the switching of orientation alerts were the main functions of the system.
Since then, the emphasis in the development was placed on sophisticated software algorithms to detect many more events in the domain of care, such as inactivity, wandering, leaving the bed or the room at night. Recently, development was started to equip the system with selflearning capabilities such that deviations from the profile of daily routines can be detected. Those deviations are often caused by changes in a person’s health status.
Middle East Health: SensFloor won the Innovation Award from the German Ministry of Economics and Energy for a second time in 2017. This must have been a big boost for the company. How widely is the floor used?
Christl Lauterbach: So far, SensFloor Care systems have been installed in more than 50 nursing homes, senior residences and hospitals. Besides Germany, we serve clients all over Europe. Outside of this region, we work with highly specialized distributors in other countries, such as the USA, Australia and New Zealand. The partners have been qualified by Future-Shape to enable them for distribution, installation and maintenance of the SensFloor system.
More than 40 living labs at universitiesand private institutes in Europe have been equipped with SensFloor, providing an interesting base for research and development.
Middle East Health: Are there facilities in the Middle East where it is installed?
Christl Lauterbach: The product was showcased first time in the Middle East during the Arab Health exhibition in 2018 and there was a lot of interest and excitement about it. Despite that, there has been no health care project in the Middle East, so far. There are however a couple of evaluation setups in the region which we hope will develop to full scale projects. The awareness of our product has to grow and we are in the process of developing this market. The high-quality level of clinics and new clinic developments make us hopeful that we will reach this goal. Our product adds an entirely new layer of health care and service quality to the industry.
Middle East Health: Do you have representatives in the Middle East?
Christl Lauterbach: We have a company called 7 Dwarfs in Dubai who represents our products and supports clients from the very early stages of evaluation to the integration of the product. 7 Dwarfs has been working with SensFloor since 2015 utilizing it in the event and exhibition industry for interactive applications. Doing these kind of temporary installations, they have gathered a lot of deep technical and mechanical knowledge about this product and we decided in 2017 to sign a contract with them. The benefit we see is that they have the product knowledge paired with the knowledge of local construction and the interior fit-out industry. This combination appeared to be much more valuable to us than a partnership with a distributor who specializes in the medical and healthcare sector. They come with the technical competence to make SensFloor projects in the Middle East a success.
Middle East Health: Can SensFloor also be used in private homes?
Christl Lauterbach: Yes, it is possible to use it in private homes. It is even possible to install it on top of the existing flooring (wood, stone, vinyl), because we use a double-sided adhesive foil for installation. This layer structure can be removed without any trace, when the SensFloor is no longer needed.
In private homes SensFloor offers new support for home care and safety. “Out of bed alarm” for fall prevention and fall alarms are improving the quality of care and help to keep the health status of the residents stable. In case of patients suffering from dementia, leaving home alerts are crucial for keeping them save at home.
Through presence detection SensFloor can operate lights and air-conditioning. The control of automatic doors is more efficient than with movement detectors, because they will open only when someone is standing in front of it and not when just passing by. In combination with intrusion alarms the SensFloor system is able to trace the movement and presence of intruders and make it accessible over an internet browser.
Middle East Health: Who would do the monitoring in a home setup?
Christl Lauterbach: There are different methods of setting the alarm in home scenarios. These include from using potential-free relays to communicate with alarm systems, to cloudbased solutions for setting up alert chains. It is also possible to display the activity remotely and send alarms through a secure channel over the internet such that the current health status of persons can be checked by relatives or care providers.
Middle East Health: How long does it take to install?
Christl Lauterbach: Usually, we calculate a necessary installation time of one hour for 2-4 square metres, depending on intended floor construction.
Middle East Health: How much does it cost to install?
Christl Lauterbach: Usually the cost of the Sensfloor installation is less than 4% of the overall costs of an apartment – not much, considering the improvement in the quality of care.
Middle East Health: The floor is very sensitive, it will even detect spilled liquid. The system will presumably record every movement on its surface and accumulate a lot of data of the movements of patients, doctors, nurses, hospital carts, items dropped on the floor or drinks spilled, for example. How does the system filter out irrelevant data?
Christl Lauterbach: First of all, no data is irrelevant. If there are spilled liquids on the floor, they will give a signal, and if they are in the size of a body lying on the floor, a fall alarm is given. However, the puddle should be removed anyway to avoid slipping of the patient.
Middle East Health: What can it do with the all the data that is captured?
Christl Lauterbach: All data captured in a room will be available at the ward terminal for 48 hours. There are history functions in the software, which will enable the nurse to recall what happened in the room. For instance: When did the person get in/out of bed. How often did he use the toilet during the night? Did the new medication he received change his behaviour or sleep rhythm?
