California Business Journal: "AI For Health: How Pontosense Is Revolutionizing Healthcare With Tech Innovations"

Only one revolutionary solution harnesses the power of AI and cutting-edge sensors to monitor and wirelessly measure patients’ vital signs continuously: Pontosense’s Silver Shield. This technology company’s innovative approach has already proven its value by improving driver safety.

Pontosense now promises to upgrade healthcare facilities for the aging. In particular, long-term care facilities like retirement communities and nursing homes have already started to benefit from Pontosense’s next-generation solution.

Wirelessly Measure Vitals With Pontosense

AI promises many advances in healthcare, from sensing and analyzing patients’ health data to help diagnose possible problems, to processing the huge reservoirs of information from clinical trials. One of the most exciting new advances, however, is Pontosense’s use of AI to monitor patients’ health.

“Taking patients’ vital signs has traditionally been a time-consuming process,” says Muxin Ma, COO of Pontosense. “Nurses and their assistants have needed to physically walk to each room and perform a series of tests, then manually note the results before moving on to the next person. This meant a patient could go hours between having their vital signs checked. AI changes all that.”

Pontosense’s sensors are so sensitive, they can report medical-grade information about patients even if they are standing on the other side of the room. In addition to their heart rate and its variability, these sensors pick up the patients’ rate of breathing and other movements.

How Pontosense Technology Works

“We call it the Wireless Intelligent Sensing millimeter-wave radar system, or WISe,” Ma says. “It works by emitting signals with tiny wavelengths, much the same way bats use sound to navigate through their environment.”

These pulses can perceive movements down to two-tenths of a millimeter — precise enough to sense the slight twitch of blood moving through someone’s arteries. “That’s how we measure their pulse, for instance,” Ma notes. “This technology works on a quantum level.” The sensor then sends the information from these signals to an AI for analysis.

If that wasn’t already impressive enough, Pontosense’s Silver Shield can also determine if a given patient’s habitual movements, such as their gait, have become abnormal. “Our AI can tell if someone is fatigued or in distress,” Ma explains. “All these things can signal a medical emergency.”

Moreover, since AI is tireless, it can deliver these data points in real-time. Patients are no longer left vulnerable between nurses’ rounds. Instead, their vital signs are constantly monitored, which means anomalies and possible problems can be flagged as soon as they appear.

Pontosense Enables Lightning-Fast Response to Medical Emergencies

“Every healthcare worker understands the difference even just a few seconds can make during a medical emergency,” Ma says. “The faster staff and caregivers can respond when someone starts to have a heart attack or stroke, the better the outcome for the patient, and this rapid response is particularly important for the elderly.”

Pontosense’s Silver Shield responds with superhuman speed and alerts the people on duty. “This technology, quite frankly, saves lives,” Ma says.

With elder care, responding to falls is particularly important, as people of advanced age can experience severe consequences from a fall. Indeed, some can even prove fatal. According to the United Kingdom’s National Health Service, approximately one in three people over the age of 65 will fall at least once in a single year. That number rises to half the people over the age of 80.

With Pontosense’s eagle-eyed sensors and unblinking AI, however, caregivers and staff learn that someone fell with barely a pause. “Our system detects falls with 100 percent accuracy,” Ma says.

The afflicted individual doesn’t even need to hit a panic button because the system automatically registers what happened and raises the alarm. This is particularly important in cases when the patient is experiencing severe trauma and cannot signal for help themselves, but that’s not the only benefit of Pontosense’s unique technology.

Pontosense Preserves Patients’ Dignity, Privacy

“In my experience, a lot of patients resist wearing devices like pendants, which can feel like being tagged or on a leash,” Ma says. “It’s dehumanizing. They also tend to dislike cameras, and for good reason — these technologies infringe on their privacy. I wouldn’t be surprised if some patients remove their devices from time to time.”

Yet healthcare workers understand the necessity of having the most timely, reliable data about their patients’ health. Luckily, Pontosense’s Silver Shield helps resolve this dilemma. Its system gets healthcare professionals the information they need without requiring people to submit to indignities.

The Future of Healthcare For the Elderly

By combining the latest advancements in sensor technology with AI, Pontosense delivers next-generation healthcare for seniors. Continuous care, lightning response to medical emergencies, and a targeted solution that preserves patient privacy.

For these reasons and more, nursing homes are adopting Pontosense’s Silver Shield to level up their operations. As a result, the healthcare of aging will never be the same.

This article was originally published on California Business Journal on December 1 2023 by Karen Janowitz.