News Article

Health Innovation With AI

At Pinnacle Solutions, we work hard to use real data to improve lives. One of our teams recently realized that analyzing patient motion can help predict disease progression or even quantify injury recovery. Healthcare providers can learn a lot just by watching patient movements—this is why in-person visits have historically been the norm. Much has changed these days, and there are new ways to monitor patient needs and progression without requiring in-person meetings, travel, and doctor’s visits.

By using remote monitoring devices and AI algorithms, Healthcare providers can receive early warning signs about patient stability that can help prevent falls or even anticipate the progression of diseases. An estimated 36 million older adults fall every year—up to 32,000 can die from the fall, and 3 million are treated in emergency rooms for fall-related injuries. 1 in 5 of these falls results in a severe injury such as broken bones or brain damage. With the help of AI and data analytics, it’s possible to prevent many of these falls, or anticipate if they might happen.

Recently, Pinnacle Solutions created a hackathon team with some students at Ontario Tech University. By using a webcam, the Internet of Things, and SAS Machine Learning, we were able to analyze movement, determine a patient’s Risk Score for falling, and spot changes that can detect diseases and loss of inner-ear balance. We were able to build models using the unique data gained from the SAS Artificial Intelligence, which enables doctors, insurers, patients, and more to track identities and monitor health safely. By using this data we can analyze a person’s movement and provide life-altering care.

This project used SAS, OpenPose, & IoT Devices to analyze patient motion and health, and our combined team was able to build models that created distinct signatures unique to an individual’s identity. Every person on Earth walks and moves in a way that is unique to them, and SAS AI and Machine Learning can analyze them and extrapolate the data to allow Healthcare providers to better anticipate diseases associated with balance, motion, and movement.

We used our data using a smart wearable shoe sensor. This “smart shoe” insole can collect continuous streaming data using almost 200 sensors. Like a fingerprint, it records a person’s unique identity in terms of how they stand, walk, or run. By creating a unique signature attached to their identity, the collection of pressure sensors, accelerometers, and gyroscopes can track every aspect of patient movement to allow Healthcare providers to correctly determine factors based on body position, weight, injury, and disease.

Through some friendly competition generated via the SAS Hackathon, our team focused on building an application that could provide instantaneous expert analysis related to mobility, balance, and motion. By saving a patient’s baseline risk score, the application can also track things such as improvements, worsening potential health, and more. This incredible piece of technology can also track changes in general health and can indicate early onset diseases and injuries in many patients. We believe the uses of this application are significant and will impact the ability of Healthcare providers and patients. Pinnacle Solutions is dedicated to improving lives by collecting and analyzing real data. Through monitoring patient stability and predicting disease we can better the Healthcare industry overall and reduce the injuries that come with falls and balance issues in older adults.

A big thanks to all our team members from Pinnacle and Ontario Tech including DJ Penix, Dave Foster, Niketa Patel, Scott Koval, Nam Chau, Frank Hack, Phil Sampson, Nitish Kumar, Chandra Kalahasthi, and Navya Gudi.

Predictive Health Solutions software will be available to hospitals and health systems across the country in early 2022. Leaders should contact info@phs.technology to learn more.

About Pinnacle Solutions

Pinnacle Solutions, Inc. was founded to offer advanced statistical and analytic consulting services to collect, integrate, analyze and interpret the large volumes of data that organizations utilize to run their operations. From a concept to a complete implementation, Pinnacle Solutions’ team of data scientists help businesses understand the past, monitor the present, and predict future outcomes as they move the organization ahead. To learn more visit https://thepinnaclesolutions.com/.