Revolutionizing Patient Safety: QUMEA's Innovative Approach to Healthcare Monitoring

In an era marked by the urgency of contactless care, QUMEA emerges as a beacon of innovation in patient safety. Founded during the tumultuous early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, QUMEA offers an intelligent early warning system designed to monitor patient mobility and prevent falls in a non-intrusive, anonymous manner. In this interview, we delve into the genesis of QUMEA, its value proposition to healthcare providers, and its vision for the future of healthcare monitoring.

How would you explain your solution in three sentences to a professional colleague from the health sector?

"QUMEA is an intelligent early warning system for patient rooms. Our solution is anonymous, contactless, and serves to monitor a patient's mobility and prevent falls 24/7. An unobtrusive 3D radar sensor captures movements throughout the room. Artificial intelligence analyzes the data, recognizes movement patterns, and proactively informs caregivers when patients need assistance."

What problem motivated you to start the company?

"In the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, our three founders recognized the urgent need for contactless, anonymous monitoring to relieve overburdened caregivers and enhance patient safety. The QUMEA system was developed in close collaboration with the university hospital Felix Platter in Basel.
Annually, over 200,000 falls are documented in German hospitals alone, often resulting in severe consequences such as hip fractures, surgeries, or increased anxiety. QUMEA actively addresses these challenges in healthcare."

How do you convince a pharmaceutical company, a health insurance company or another potential client to set up a pilot project with you?

"QUMEA convinces hospitals and health instituitons with an innovative approach to individual monitoring of critical events such as bed exits, restlessness, reduced mobility, and falls. Through real-time alerting, QUMEA enables time savings and reduces falls by an average of 63%.

This targeted nursing intervention prevents falls without restricting the freedom or privacy of patients or caregivers. Each successful fall prevention leads to a reduction in nursing workload. Along with the elimination of routine check rounds, this results in an average relief of 20% for nursing staff.

The continuously recorded activity data provides insights into the patients' well-being, sleep quality, and therapy outcomes.

Over 75 facilities have already chosen to implement QUMEA. Particularly motivating is that the added value of QUMEA has been proven in every pilot project, leading all institutions to adopt QUMEA after the pilot phase."

intelligent early warning system of QUMEA

Who are your current customer (groups) and who do you want your potential customers to be?

"Our main customers are units in hospitals with patients at risk of falling, particularly in areas such as geriatrics, gerontopsychiatry, neurology, surgery, and internal medicine. We have also successfully equipped newly built nursing homes. However, our focus lies in acute care.

Potential customers are healthcare facilities that can benefit from improved patient safety and more efficient care. Currently, our 75 clients are located in Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Sweden, and Finland."

Where do you see yourself in 3 years and how can 5-HT support you?

"In three years, we will have further established our EU-MDR-approved medical product for decubitus prevention. Simultaneously, we anticipate promising results from ongoing research projects, including the early detection and validation of therapies for delirium and the monitoring of vital parameters such as respiration frequency and patterns, etc. 
We seek support from 5-HT in building a network in Germany to make QUMEA accessible to all healthcare facilities."

You participated in the WE CARE event in November 2023. What is your impression of the event and what have you gained (so far) from participating?

"It was a special honor for us to be chosen as the winner of the WE CARE award by five nursing directors from renowned clinics. This recognition emphasizes the relevance of QUMEA in German clinics and strengthens our commitment. Currently, we are planning pilot projects with some of the attending clinics and establishing a branch in Germany to further establish our solution.

The event was particularly valuable for us as it had the right size to effectively connect and expand our network during great conversations."

QUMEA is the winning team of the WE CARE event