Safe Room - keeping patients safe through nights

Researchers at Dep. of Acute Psychiatry, Dep. of Neurology, and the Intervention Centre at Oslo University Hospital in collaboration with the technology provider Equanostic AS have developed a prototype of a system named “Trygg Natt”. The system monitors basic vital functions, such as respiratory rate, location in a room and movement intensity of a patient and provides real-time notifications of adverse events to health-care providers. The monitoring will be based on non-intrusive radar-sensors with very high precision, allowing a decision-support system that can be certified as a medical devise. Initial target group will be acutely hospitalized psychiatric patients that can experience rapidly changing mental states, risk of self-harming, and treatment with medication that can impose negative effects on their circulatory and respiratory systems. For their own safety, these patients have around-the-clock supervision by physical presence of staff at least every two hours, also during night. They will strongly benefit from an automatic monitoring system that allows no disturbance during nights without the occurrence of an actual adverse event that requires attention from a health-care provider. Later, the system can easily be adjusted to the needs of other groups, like prisoners and patients in different somatic wards with similar needs of monitoring. Extensive feedback from many stakeholders from different clinical environments confirm that we are targeting a clear unmet need. The ultimate goal for the QUAL-project was to develop a start-up company that delivers clinically certified monitoring services to keep various patient groups safe. This project has ensured business justification for a start-up company, and we have established Trygg Natt AS which will now take on the responsibility to develop the Trygg Natt solution towards a marketable medical device in EU and the US.

With a market introduction of the solution, we will contribute to increased safety and improved treatment and quality of life of particularly vulnerable patient groups. Furthermore, we will provide safer working environment for healthcare personnel and enable improved care and more efficient resource utilization at the care institutions. More efficient collection of somatic data for research can allow improved treatment in the future We have established a new company and laid a solid foundation and strategically positioned the company to be able to develop Trygg Natt into a successful product in the market. This will lead to more jobs and value creation in Norway and abroad.