As Joanna Dumdey walked into her private room, a camera sat fixed above her head. The new equipment inside the Villa Elegante Tucson Foothills Assisted Living And Memory Care Community uses artificial intelligence to track if or when 84-year-old Dumdey and her neighbors ever fall.
Every year, the CDC says more than one in four older adults fall, and about 41 thousand older adults die as a result of a fall. Via Elegante managers said they decided to start using a brand called ‘Safely You’ — a camera scanning the floor for anything but feet and looks for falls.
The camera will automatically trigger a phone call to facility staff if a resident has fallen. Staff usually then respond within 45 seconds.
This day, Joanna’s daughter, Elizabeth Dumdey-Bartelsen, helped her settle into her space. Dumdey-Bartelsen knows her mom, at this age, also lives with dementia.
She said her mother suffered a stroke that affected her left side in her late 40s. That episode, however, did not stop Dumdey from helping others living with a stroke learn how to navigate everyday life.