Contact: John McIntosh
Signature Flooring
800.809.7086
[email protected]
Signature Flooring and Georgia Tech Research Institute Introduce – A Living Floor –
Signature Flooring and Georgia Tech Research Institute announced today that they have created the industry’s first “Living Floor”, a Resident Safety Monitoring System (RSM) for Senior Living Facilities.
Falls continue to be the leading cause of death and injury among the elderly. 87% of all fractures in the elderly are due to falls. While early detection is good, prevention is better. To that end, Signature Flooring sought out Georgia Tech Research Institute to create a flooring system that can help predict and prevent falls before they happen through piezoelectric (PZ) sensing technology integrated into Signature’s commercial flooring products. The result is the introduction of the industry’s first working prototype displaying the possibilities of a “living floor” at this year’s Leading Age Conference on October 29th-Nov 1st, in New Orleans, LA.
John McIntosh, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Signature Flooring shared that: “One of the key performance indicators of health is movement: A body in motion stays in motion. Movement is a powerful indicator of vitality. Currently, it is difficult to accurately and non-invasively measure a resident’s patterns of motion. By tracking a residents movement over time, one can determine when movement slows, and make proper adjustments to exercise/safety routines. If you can measure something, you can improve it.”
Through piezoelectric calibrations collected from pressure points in the floor, we will be able to wirelessly communicate to all caregivers when a fall occurs. More importantly, we can gather data from each resident room indicating key health metrics such as: footsteps count, trips to bathroom, duration of inactivity, etc., each day/week/month. This behavior can be monitored by the caregivers as well as the seniors’ family through an APP that sends real time notifications and helps detect behavior trends. Capturing this data will not only create safer environments, but allow caregivers to customize preventative health programs based on individual biomechanical behavior.
Kevin Caravati, Principal Research Scientist for Georgia Tech Research Institute shared: “We’ve been conducting research on living buildings and advanced sensing systems for many years, and our initial “living floor” prototypes offer a broad range of applications for the health and hospitality industries. Signature Flooring is an ideal partner to help commercialize innovative flooring technologies; together we are helping create jobs for Georgia’s existing and future manufacturing workforce.”
Located in Dalton, Georgia, Signature Flooring is a vertically integrated flooring manufacturer serving the commercial, healthcare, and hospitality markets. For more information about Signature’s products please visit www.signatureflooring.com or contact us at 800.809.7086
For information about the upcoming Leading Age Conference please visit www.leadingage.org.