SINGAPORE (June 28): Local entrepreneur Lim Meng Hui was working on an artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled security system to detect intruders when his grandmother fell and lay helpless. When her health deteriorated rapidly after that, he decided that detecting falls among the elderly was a far more critical need that his start-up could address.
Lim and co-founder Toh Ying Wei started SmartPeep, a tongue-in-cheek moniker for what is shaping up to be an essential tool for an ageing population.
The system is currently on trial at a hospital and nursing home in Malaysia, as well as a public hospital in Singapore and a retirement village in Australia.
SmartPeep plugs into a facility’s closed circuit television system, and sets off an alarm when it detects that a person has fallen over, alerting caregivers to the situation.
The system is also smart enough to differentiate between patients and nurses, and will turn off the alert when a nurse enters the room to attend to the patient, allowing caregivers to concentrate on their job rather than spend time dealing with the technology.
To find out more about this AI solution, pick up in this week issue of The Edge Singapore (Issue 888, week of July 1), on sale now at newsstands. Subscribers can log in and read the story. Not a subscriber" http://www.theedgesingapore.com/subscribe" target="_blank">here instead.
