Arbor Acres
Improves Level of Care with SARA and SARA's Positioning System (SPS)
Description
Arbor Acres is a United Methodist Retirement Community located in Winston-Salem, N.C. Arbor Acres offers independent living, assisted living, and skilled nursing care. Arbor Acres opened in March 1980, providing a home for more than 100 seniors. Today, approximately 400 residents call this unique community home. Its mission is to serve senior adults through facilities and programs that enhance opportunity for security, contentment and life with meaning and purpose.
Opportunity
Arbor Acres was faced with making a decision regarding an aging wireless infrastructure. The technology in place would become obsolete in two years, so they began the search for a non-proprietary solution that would improve reporting and alerting across the campus.
Arbor Acres was specifically looking for a way to create a single platform across multiple systems, including nurse call, fire and building management systems. An awareness solution would not only provide life safety but also would provide a better way to communicate with residents and staff. Above all, L.D. Burton, Arbor Acres’ director of facilities, wanted a reliable system that he was confident would work properly if and when an emergency occurred anywhere on the Arbor Acres campus.
Solution
Status Solutions’ Situational Awareness and Response Assistant (SARA) was integrated with Arbor Acres’ existing nurse call system and fire panel to allow alerting via pagers, cell phones and email. All of Arbor Acres’ residents are equipped with wireless pendants, and SARA’s Positioning System (SPS) was implemented to provide accurate location information.
Through SPS, a patent-pending vector-mapping technology, SARA provides highly accurate location data. The location information provided to staff shows the proximity of the mobile user to a fixed device or virtual point of interest that can be as accurate as to the apartment. This level of accuracy is not available with traditional RF-based systems and has proved to help improve response times.
“Any system can tell what general location someone is in, but SPS cuts down on the nurse’s response time because we can pinpoint, in a matter of feet instead of ¼ miles, where someone is when they activate their pendant,” states Chris Gibson, IT director at Arbor Acres.
According to John Baird, Status Solutions co-founder and lead developer of this innovative capability, “SPS is the process of SARA automatically creating a multi-dimensional model of the EchoStream RF Infrastructure on the property. The model consists of both fixed devices such as pull cords, wall mounted pendants, smoke detectors, etc., and virtual points of interest within the community. When a resident activates a mobile device, SARA mathematically compares the location of the mobile resident in question to the model and provides the closest positions.”
Arbor Acres has created approximately 200 points of interest on their own. Gibson attests, “It is a very simple process to set up the points of interest throughout our buildings and outdoor areas. This has greatly improved our ability to locate individuals in the event of an emergency.”
Partnership
With a current expansion project already underway, Arbor Acres can easily extend SARA’s alerting and location capabilities by taking advantage of the wireless “bubble” that is now in place.
When evaluating technology providers, the management team at Arbor Acres was looking for a reliable, innovative partner that they could establish a long-term relationship with; they have found that partner in Status Solutions.
