According to the Alzheimer’s Association, more than 5 million Americans are currently living with Alzheimer’s disease, and another person is diagnosed every 67 seconds. Providing care for people suffering from Alzheimer’s and other cognitive diseases is challenging on many fronts, not the least of which is having to monitor the patients’ locations at all times to ensure their safety.
GTX Corp., a Los Angeles-based firm that sells a number of location-tracking devices and services, began selling GPS SmartSole a year ago. GPS SmartSole is an insole with an embedded rechargeable GPS module made by Telit Wireless. When a user is outdoors, the module transmits its GPS coordinates, which are converted onto a map that loved ones or caregivers (who pay a monthly subscription fee ranging from $30 to $50, as well as $299 for the product) can access via the SmartSole Web portal or smartphone application.
Now, GTX has just released BLE SmartSole. Instead of a GPS module, this product contains an embedded Bluetooth beacon, made by BluVision, which transmits a signal to BluFi, a Bluetooth-to-Wi-Fi sensor that BluVision also offers. Through the facility’s Wi-Fi network, the data is forwarded to BluVision’s cloud-based servers, where the data is then filtered and sent to SmartSole software via an application programming interface (API). GTX will market the BLE SmartSole to assisted-living and nursing-care facilities.
Patrick Bertagna, GTX’s CEO, says the shoe insole is a great form factor for tracking devices for the elderly, since it avoids the stigma associated with bracelets or pendants that other tracking systems employ. “Patients don’t want to be stigmatized with a tracking device,” he says. “Putting such a device inside the shoe gets rid of that stigma.”
The insole form factor also means that only patients wearing shoes with the insoles can be located via the SmartSole system. So facility personnel would not be alerted if, for example, a patient were to wander out of bed.
Bertagna says his company opted to employ Bluetooth technology for its indoor tracking system due to its ease of use and simple installation process, compared with those of other tracking systems.
“With [other forms of] RFID, for example, it is expensive to install [readers and] repeaters, and they need to be installed by a professional, whereas the BluFi is plug-and-play,” Bertagna explains. “An administrator could set up an entire facility.”
To install each BluFi device, a user simply plugs it into a wall outlet (the device runs on AC power) and then utilizes SmartSole software running on a Bluetooth-enabled computer, tablet or smartphone to read the beacon’s unique identifier. Using the SmartSole software, a user can then rename the BluFi in accordance with where it is installed (“room 566” or “kitchen,” for instance). The employee would repeat this process with each pair of insoles, first adding them to the hosted Internet-based SmartSole database by discovering their numeric ID number through the Bluetooth interface, and then renaming them with the name of the patient to whom they will be issued.
The user can then set up alerts, either via e-mail or text message or both, to be triggered in the event that the beacon embedded in the insoles is detected outside a designated zone.
The BluFi sensors can detect the SmartSole beacons from a distance of up to 150 feet. The beacons transmit their signal every 250 milliseconds, and the SmartSole monitoring platform updates the names assigned to the insoles that each BluFi detects every 15 seconds. If a facility manager wanted location accuracy better than room-level, says Lior Ganel, BluVision’s chief operating officer, he or she would need to install multiple BluFi sensors within the room.
If multiple sensors were installed inside a single room and the beacon’s ping rate were set to transmit more often than once every 250 milliseconds, a SmartSole beacon’s location could be pinpointed down to better than 10 feet, based on the strength of the beacon’s signal received by each BluFi sensor within its range. The downside of more granular location tracking is that increasing a beacon’s ping rate would also more quickly diminish its battery life. With the factory setting of a 250-millisecond ping rate, Ganel reports, the beacon’s battery should last for one year. When the battery begins to wane, the beacon transmits an alert to the BluFi device, along with its unique ID.
According to Bertagna, GTX is currently working with a number of nursing facilities in the United States and Europe that are piloting the BLE SmartSole system. The BluFi sensors cost a facility $99 each, while the insoles are priced at $29 per pair. To access the SmartSole software running on BluVision’s cloud-based server, facilities will also pay a monthly subscription fee ranging from $25 to $150, depending on the number of users involved.
By this summer, GTX plans to release a third insole product with a combination GPS-Bluetooth module, which would support both indoor and outdoor location tracking. Eventually, the company reports, it will likely also sell the BLE SmartSole direct to consumers, for home use.