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How Contactless Fall Monitoring Works, and Why There's No Camera
Some residents won't wear a pendant, can't remember to press it, or fall where they can't reach it. Contactless radar monitoring watches the room so the resident doesn't have to do anything at all.
Pendants and call cords work well for residents who can use them. But a resident living with dementia may take a pendant off, forget what it is for, or fall in the washroom at night with it on the nightstand. For those residents, the most useful safety device is one that asks nothing of them.
Nothing to wear, charge, remember or refuse
The DCC Contactless Fall Safety Monitor from Poltys Canada mounts on the ceiling or high on a wall and monitors the room itself. There is no device for the resident to wear, no battery for them to charge and no button for them to remember. It works the same way whether the resident is cooperative, confused or asleep.
How radar sensing works
The monitor uses low-power 60 GHz radar. It sends out radio signals and reads how they reflect off people and objects in the room. From those reflections it can tell whether someone is present and how they are moving. When it recognizes the pattern of a fall, such as a sudden change in height followed by the person remaining low, it raises an alarm.
That alarm goes to Direct Care Connect DCC™ tagged with the room the monitor covers, then follows the same prioritized routing as any other emergency: to the caregivers assigned to that area, on their phones, handsets or pagers, with escalation if it isn't accepted.
Why radar, not a camera
Privacy is what makes contactless monitoring acceptable in the places falls often happen: bedrooms and washrooms. The monitor does not capture, record or store images. It works from radio reflections, not pictures, so residents keep their dignity and families don't have to weigh safety against privacy.
Where it fits
Residents who remove or forget pendants. Common in memory care, where cognitive changes make wearables unreliable.
Higher-risk rooms and times. Washrooms and overnight hours, when residents are alone and least likely to call.
Alongside other devices. It complements pendants, call cords and bed or chair pads rather than replacing them.
Placement basics
One monitor covers one room, with a range of up to 7 m (about 23 ft). It needs a clear, unobstructed view of the floor area and reports over the community's 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi network, so coverage is confirmed during installation. Your authorized Poltys dealer plans placement room by room.