With the segment of the population requiring nursing care expected to increase drastically from 2025, when all members of the Baby Boom generation will have reached old age, attention is focusing on a wide range of efforts to help the elderly maintain activities for daily living (ADL) and extend their healthy lifestyles.

Sumirin Fill Care is adopting the ICT-equipped Life Rhythm Navi^*1 Plus Doctor resident monitoring system in private-pay elderly care facilities that have opened since fiscal 2016. The system analyzes data from numerous sensors such as bed sensors, motion-detection sensors, and temperature/humidity sensors. It provides a detailed real-time grasp of the interior environments of living spaces, as well as residents' sleep states and activities, converting all of this information into data.

Bringing “visibility” to resident monitoring data in this way can be useful in preventing falls and in keeping up on the condition of each resident. Advice from specialized medical institutions based on the data makes it possible to effectively maintain and improve the medical condition of each patient. Also, implementing the system in conjunction with nurse-call functions enables unified management of information from residents, enhanced information sharing and collaboration among staff, which is expected to help reduce staff workloads.

A system using Sumirin Fill Care's Life Rhythm Navi Plus Doctor won the highest honor in the Living of the Year 2017 prize contest (hosted by the Council of Senior Housing Industry Executives) for advanced systems using ICT. In fiscal 2018, Sumirin Fill Care made still more progress with this system, developing and making available the Forest Life daily health support service program.

Forest Life focuses attention on four elements that determine healthy lifespans: high-quality sleep, comfortable living environments (air quality), healthy diet (swallowing function^*2) and appropriate exercise (walking function). This is a service aimed at extending the healthy lifespans of residents by using ICT technology to bring visibility to their status in terms of these four elements, in combination with guidance by doctors and rehabilitation specialists based on data that has been rendered “visible”.

In fiscal 2018, the system was adopted in a verification trial at Gran Forest Gakugei Daigaku, a private-pay elderly care facility operated by Sumirin Fill Care. In fiscal 2019, this program expanded to Sumirin Fill Care private-pay elderly care facilities with nursing care services that have opened since fiscal 2016, aiming to adopt and provide Forest Life in all of its facilities.

*1 Life Rhythm Navi is a registered trademark of EcoNaviSta Ltd.

*2 The function by which food in the mouth is transported to the stomach.

Elegano Nishinomiya is a mixed-use facility combining our own nursing-care insurance business. The facility also offers a lifestyle program that brings the peace of mind necessary for nursing-care to a wide range of residents from those living independently to those needing assisted living or nursing care. A variety of innovations are intended to help all residents' live more energetic lives.

These facilities employ the living environment expertise cultivated at the Sumitomo Forestry Group. The vaulted dining room where daily meals are served has a private Japanese-style dining space where residents may share meals with their family surrounded by the warmth of wood. Elegano Nishinomiya also incorporated housing exteriors and a promenade (playground) emanating the feel of the changing seasons through a design created with the help of Sumitomo Forestry Landscaping. On the care floor terrace for residents requiring long-term care, there is a garden with flowers to enjoy while sitting in a wheelchair. These ingenuities bring the joy of green spaces to everyone. The nursing-term care living spaces are equipped with bedside tables that encourage more pleasant sleep through the power of wood and indirect lighting (researched and developed by the Tsukuba Research Institute).

More enhanced medical support is available to all residents from neural examinations through an MRI for the early detection of dementia and tumor maker tests that help with the early diagnosis of cancer. To maintain the health of residents, the exercise room provides water beds that offer massages through the power of water and various other prevention training machines right for seniors in addition to lessons from sports instructors.

Liberal arts programs offer everything from games like go and mahjong to pottery, watercolor painting, calligraphy and flower arrangement classes. Skilled artisans teach the programs that residents can choose from various times throughout the day according to their skill level and health whether beginner or a person who requires long-term care. College and graduate students majoring in music from Kobe College also perform regular concerts.

All units are all equipped with Wi-Fi environments as a new service to distribute information through a channel dedicated to Elegano Nishinomiya. Beds for residents requiring nursing-care are also fitted with sleep sensors from Paramount Bed to collect sleep data, which helps support the daily health of residents.

Sumirin Care Life enhances living environments so that each resident can live life in their own way. We are also advancing even more high quality services by unifying nursing-term and nursing staff, external medical institutions, expert teachers, nutritionists, care managers and many other professionals.