KONICA MINOLTA

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Giving Shape to Ideas

Social Innovation

Providing Nursing Care Solutions to Address the Issues of a Super-Aged Society―HitomeQ Care Support

Related SDGs

Transforming Nursing Care Staff Workflow and Helping to Eliminate Chronic Nursing Care Staff Shortages

With the number of people needing nursing care in Japan increasing in recent years, the shortage of care workers has become a social issue. To address the situation, Konica Minolta’s HitomeQ Care Support is helping to transform nursing care workflows. This service detects certain resident behaviors using near-infrared cameras installed on the ceiling along with sensors that detect movement, and then notifies nursing care staff through their smartphones. It helps the staff to determine the best response after grasping the situation and enables information sharing among staff in real time, greatly improving the efficiency of work.

One facility where this service was introduced reported an average efficiency improvement of 30% for nursing care staff. The extra time saved can now be used to enhance resident self-sufficiency, such as through rehabilitation assistance, and for education and training for nursing staff. This, in turn, enables provision of higher quality care, which has improved the satisfaction of residents and their families as well as nursing staff and facility administrators.

As a result of changes to nursing care benefits in April 2021, Japan’s nursing care took a sharp turn toward a more scientific approach. Shifting from subjective evaluations, which until now had relied on the caregiver’s front-line experience and gut instinct, to objective evaluations driven by digital technology, has enabled a deeper approach into evidence-based scientific nursing care tailored to each individual, and helped nursing care staff to play an active role as skilled professionals.