The ageing of the population has led to an increase, particularly significant in recent years, in the demand for care from the elderly. Faced with a drop in public funding for the sector, families can either take care of the elderly themselves or turn to private services and facilities. However, no solution guarantees the monitoring of the elderly person throughout the day without intrusions, however benevolent, into their everyday life.
SensoArgento was born from an idea of Marcello Chiesa, an engineer specialised in artificial intelligence, to fill this gap, i.e. to help the elderly and support their carers with high-tech products and services designed around their needs and non-invasive. The team was consolidated within Talents for Enterprise, Fondazione CRT’s high-level training course, and was selected to participate in the final phase of the project. It is currently composed of Marcello himself, Piero Potì, an engineer with years of experience in the biomedical sector, Sandro Sartoni, a PhD student in electronic engineering, and Filippo Monti, a sociologist involved in projects with a strong social impact.
The startup is working on the implementation of Argo, a system of non-invasive sensors, small and easy to install, for monitoring the elderly in their home environment. Placed in the rooms where the elderly person spends his or her day, the sensors check compliance with the daily routine and detect abnormal events with respect to the habits that characterise it, such as a change in mealtimes or in the number and duration of visits to the bathroom, which could reveal a suboptimal state of health.
The sensors dialogue with a hub that provides information to the caregiver, e.g. the child or grandchild, via an app designed to be intuitive and easy to use: thanks to constantly updated data, the caregiver can always be aware of their loved one’s health status without perceiving any intrusion into their daily life. Not only that, the system can immediately detect and notify potentially dangerous situations.
One of the most common situations for an elderly person is precisely loss of orientation during the night, a situation that can also affect individuals with a high degree of autonomy and that can occur both at home and in a care facility. Wandering at night exposes the elderly person to a much greater risk of falling and increases the likelihood that he or she will leave their home. The sensor system on which Argo is based makes it possible to detect at an early stage, for example, the moment when the elderly person should get out of bed and automatically switch on courtesy lights to help them find their way around. At the same time, should the person leave the safe zone, Argo would send a notification to the caregiver, making it possible to prevent a more dangerous situation.
Argo is therefore all about serenity: serenity for the elderly person to continue to go about their day as usual and serenity for the carer to know that, in any moment of need of their loved one or the person being cared for, they would be promptly notified.
SensoArgento was the winner of the Impact award at the Fondazione CRT Demo day.
