Monitoring Movement for Pressure Ulcer Prevention

The incidence rate and subsequent costs of preventable pressure ulcers is astounding. Although pressure ulcer risk assessment tools and prevention approaches have been a topic of research and for many years, the incidence rate has remained relatively consistent. One reason that progress has not been made to lower the incidence rate is that there is no objective monitoring tool to determine how much a person is moving or is being moved in their bed. Current practices are time-intensive and have not yet leveraged intelligent monitoring technology that could reduce clinical burden and increase accuracy of the risk assessment and efficacy of prevention protocols. The goal of this work is to develop and test an automated movement detection monitoring tool that could lead to reduced burden on clinicians and in-turn reduce pressure ulcer incidence rates. This monitoring tool will be an extension of our intelligent bed sensor we developed named the Embedded Scale, or E-Scale. The E-Scale currently has software modules that detect bed exit, individual weight, and multi-person weight. The project described here would develop a movement module for the E- Scale to monitor people's movements in bed in an attempt to eventually reduce incidence of pressure ulcers in clinical care.