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Domitys implements residents' safety IoT solution with Life Plus and Actility

Press Release – Paris, France – July 19th, 2022

Domitys, the largest French management group of senior residences, has deployed an assistance and frailty prevention IoT solution in its “Domaine de Grand Baie” residence in Mauritius, to remotely monitor patients’ safety through features like fall detection, location and health state. The solution is using smart watches provided by Life Plus, connected via a private LoRaWAN network, powered by Actility.

Life Plus, a leading European provider of support and remote patient monitoring solutions, improves the well-being and health of thousands of people over 65 with modular solutions, from assistance to frailty prevention and telemonitoring.

Using Actility’s ThingPark Enterprise IoT platform Life Plus deployed a private LoRaWAN® network to cover the whole Domitys facility, composed of 2 buildings with 120 apartments each consisting of 2 to 3 rooms. 8 gateways have been installed – 6 indoors and 2 outdoors – to make sure the network covers all locations: apartments, elevators, and surrounding outdoor areas, creating 10 kilometers-wide coverage bubble around the residence, thus ensuring continuous functioning of the solution to secure residents at all places, avoiding autonomy loss and helping the staff in their day-to-day work.

A demo kit is now available for purchase on ThingPark Market , the leading IoT B2B marketplace, powered by Actility.

smartwatch

In search of a non-intrusive and non-stigmatizing solution for the elderly

There are over 665 million people over 65 in the world today. The number will rise to 2 billion by 2050. It’s considered that most of them – 85% – is willing to stay at their homes. On the other side, caregivers are often far from their relatives and overwhelmed by day-to-day support. Most of the currently available devices and solutions are only concerning assistance (SOS and falls) and are stigmatizing, with low use rate and outdated design. Prevention, which is key to allowing the elderly to age well, especially at home, is not industrialized yet. Life Plus is aiming to solve this issue with a very easy to use solution, including assistance and prevention. 

With more than 150 residences and 13,000 residents, Domitys is the leader in its sector in France and a key player in the Silver Economy in France. The Group also manages 5 residences in Belgium, Italy and Mauritius, currently expanding internationally with new residences under construction in Spain, Portugal, Germany but also in China, Malaysia and Thailand.

At its facility Domaine du Grand Baie in Mauritius, the group wanted to secure the residents and to help maintain their autonomy, thanks to a modern and non-stigmatizing solution, ensuring its good functioning with ubiquitous connectivity where no public LoRAWAN network is available. They find the right solution with Life Plus.

Now, residents from the “Domaine du Grand Baie” wear a smartwatch; thanks to that, the staff from the residence is noticed as soon as something goes wrong (fall, unusual activity,…) or if the resident sends an SOS. The smartwatch is customizable to fit elderly preferences (dial, bracelet, display). Thanks to this possibility, the smartwatch is not stigmatizing and residents like wearing it.

Life Plus solutions have been co-created with real users: seniors, caregivers, geriatricians, general practitioners, physiotherapists, dietitians, neuropsychologists. It allowed to achieve an easy-to-use device with a customizable design and has a great usage rate: 87% of residents use it every day. Within the facility, small beacons are placed in apartments and shared areas, for the system to precisely localize residents inside the building, in a non-intrusive way, and only in case of problems.

Lifeplus Living room
Photo of a connected watch
Photo of a residence

Multi-function IoT devices to prevent senior citizens from becoming frail

Dona Care is a cloud solution, based on data and software service. Thanks to a personalized smartwatch and a digital platform, it secures people and helps caregivers in their day-to-day tasks by providing automatic fall detection, SOS call, unusual schedule (an extended stay in a room for instance), location (indoor and outdoor, communicated only in case of problem), customized coaching, automatic data transmission (health measures, activity).

Smartwatch Dona Care by Life Plus allows you to automatically alert in case of fall or any other anomaly. Through the Life Plus application, teams have access to statistics that can ease the follow-up of events like wanderings and falls, and directly alert them in case of unusual or dangerous situations. They have a full traceability of alerts as everything is centralized on the application.

LifePlus demo A
LifePlus screen B

Moreover, it helps maintain residents’ autonomy, too. Residents are motivated to exercise more thanks to a personalized coaching focused on physical activity: walking and active walking durations, number of steps, and a daily walking goal that can be set up, pushing them to achieve it. This program can be extended to cognition activities and nutrition advice too, to support caregivers and help maintain autonomy.

Life Plus solutions allow to:

  • Secure residents and reassure relatives too
  • Offer serenity to the managing staff
  • Save time (to the staff) thanks to the resident localization in case of emergency
  • Motivate residents with activity coaching
  • Ensure ubiquitous connectivity everywhere thanks to LoRAWAN technology and Actility’s platform
Photo of Cédric Schoindre

“Initially included in an invitation to tender for the replacement of our old solution, Life Plus offered us the most complete and innovative solution among all its competitors. The Dona Care solution is perfectly suited to our senior facilities because it can cover our needs both for those under construction, as Domaine du Grand Baie, and for those already in operation without foreseeing major construction sites. The well-being and quality of life of our residents are top priorities for Domitys. Our residents are reassured thanks to Dona Care because in the event of an alert, the team can intervene quickly. In terms of functionality, it provides us with the precise location of the alert on the map of our establishment or outside, offers a fall detection algorithm, activity monitoring, etc. Finally, the design of the watch: it is not stigmatizing like most other medallion solutions. For our residents, it is customizable and very pretty, which allows it to be considered as a fashion accessory”

explains Cédric Schoindre, Innovation and collaborative IT manager at Domitys.

Unlike our projects in France where there is a public LoRaWAN network available provided by Orange, in Mauritius it was necessary to create a private LoRaWAN bubble to ensure coverage of our apartment building and its surroundings, over a diameter of approximately 10 km. For the deployment in the residence Life Plus communicated in advance the prerequisites necessary for the deployment of the solution, to be considered during the construction site:

  • 1 category 6a RJ45 socket at each interior equipment (LoRa gateway and update terminal). This equipment (LoRa gateway and WUG) is installed in the common areas of the senior residence. Their locations have been studied to ensure the best performance of the installation while considering aesthetic constraints.
  • 1 RJ45 socket and 1 mast on the terrace for each outdoor antenna creating the LoRa bubble
  • Bluetooth location beacons do not require wiring and are battery operated. This therefore brings flexibility in their positioning in all rooms and in the hotel park, and the most discreet integration possible.

“Active equipment is connected to the building internal network administered by the group’s IT teams. Life Plus has therefore configured its equipment on a dedicated virtual network and communicated the configuration elements necessary for our settings (MAC addresses, firewall). Life Plus also assisted us with customs procedures in Mauritius and thus enabled the rapid importation of equipment. Thanks to these preparatory phases, the deployment by Life Plus of the solution took place under the best conditions and the commissioning was carried out easily. The implementation of the private LoRaWAN bubble is effective and thus ensures the safety of our senior customers who have subscribed to this remote assistance watch solution.”

explained Guillaume Gasser, IT & low voltage equipements manager at Domitys.

Photo of Guillaume Gasser
Photo of Valérie Floury

“Security is the most important thing for our clients. The watch is nice looking, light and it is kept on the wrist 24 hours a day. Il activates itself only when needed or in case of a fall for example. The processing of alerts is simple for our team, alerts are easily localized due to multiple beacons ensuring a rapid and precise intervention. The small beacons are fixed on the ceiling and the same color so that they are less visible. Life Plus system reassures residents and allows them to live more relax and free; The reliability, precision and ease of use of the system facilitates the work for the team and makes us even more professional in front of our clients.

also added Valérie Floury – Residence director – Residence du Grand Baie at Domitys Group

“When it comes to people’s health and well-being, there is no place for malfunctions. Life Plus’s solution success and perfect functioning is ensured by LoRAWAN capabilities to connect them everywhere, even in hardly reachable indoor locations. Not only is maximizes users’ safety, but also it makes the solutions very cost efficient.”

said Nicolas Jordan, COO at Actility.

Photo of Nicolas Jordan

About Life Plus   

Life Plus improves the well-being and health of people over 65 with evolving solutions, from assistance to frailty prevention and telemonitoring.

Founded in 2015, after several years of research and co-development with users (elderlies, caregivers and doctors), Life Plus automatically collects and analyzes data to improve aging well thanks to its multi-IoT platform.

Life Plus now equips more than 1 300 elderlies, and 30 senior facilities; that will be multiplied by 2 in 2022. Solutions are made in France and already deployed in 4 countries.

www.lifeplus.io – contact: sales@lifeplus.io

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About Actility   

Actility is a world leader in Low-Power Wide-Area Networks (LPWAN) industrial-grade connectivity solutions for the Internet of Things. Actility provides its ThingPark™ platform and network technology to deploy, operate and maintain public and private wireless IoT networks within a unified, scalable and versatile network infrastructure. The vast majority of nationwide LoRaWAN® network service providers (over 50) and hundreds of companies trust ThingPark™ all over the world. Through its subsidiary Abeeway, Actility also providespatented ultra-low power tracking solutions. ThingPark Market offers the largest selection of interoperable IoT gateways, devices and applications to simplify and accelerate deployment of use cases.  

Contact us here: https://www.actility.com/contact

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