Fewer falls and lighter nursing workload with QUMEA, new study finds

Falls remain one of the most persistent risks in hospital care, particularly for older adults with delirium, one of the most vulnerable patient groups in any care setting. Yet most published fall rates rely on subjective incident reports rather than independently verified data, making it hard to know how well any given approach performs once real patients, real nights, and real workloads are involved.

To bring evidence to this question, researchers looked at how two different approaches to sensing bed-exit risk performed on a specialised delirium care unit, the only ward of its kind in Europe. Over nearly 1,800 patient days, every fall was independently verified through four separate sources rather than incident reports alone, a rare degree of rigour for this kind of research.

The pattern that emerged was clear. A 49% lower rate of bed-exit-related falls: 11.5 vs. 22.6 falls per 1,000 patient days where QUMEA’s radar-based sensing was in place, a difference that remained statistically significant after adjusting for baseline differences between groups (adjusted OR 3.76, 95% CI 1.25–11.27, p=0.019).

Care teams were also alerted with more precision and spent less time responding. 20% fewer bed-exit warnings: 9,760 vs. 12,255 per 1,000 patient days (adjusted OR 1.89, 95% CI 1.41–2.53, p<.001). And 30% less time spent on issues related to bed-exits: nurse presence time was a median 16.3 vs. 23.2 minutes per patient day (adjusted OR 1.60, 95% CI 1.21–2.11, p=0.001). Less noise, more attention where it matters.

The study was independently funded by the Velux Foundation, Zurich, and its authors declare no conflicts of interest. Throughout, no cameras and no personal data were involved, reflecting Dignity by Design rather than an afterthought. Taken together, the findings suggest that seeing risk earlier can protect patients, without having to trade dignity for safety.