US 9,226,696 · Granted 2016-01-05
The Hospital Bed That Knows When You're About to Fall
Imagine a hospital bed that automatically locks itself into a safe position the moment a nurse leaves the room or it senses a patient trying to get up. If the patient moves anyway and no caregiver is around, the bed alerts the nurse and sounds an alarm — catching a dangerous situation before it happens.
The plain-English version
What it protects
The claim covers an adjustable hospital bed system that automatically detects when a care provider has exited the room or when a patient is attempting to leave the bed, then responds by moving the bed into a predefined safe configuration. What's protected here is also the integrated alert mechanism that notifies caregivers and triggers an alarm if a patient tries to exit the bed while unattended.
Why it matters
Patient falls from hospital beds are a leading cause of preventable injury and liability in healthcare settings. By automating the response to high-risk situations — repositioning the bed and alerting staff without waiting for human reaction time — this patent addresses a genuine safety gap. The combination of passive monitoring, automatic bed adjustment, and alarm notification creates a layered defense that could reduce fall incidents and the resulting legal and medical costs.
Real-world use
A patient in post-operative recovery wakes up disoriented and tries to swing his legs out of bed; the bed senses movement, lowers itself, and simultaneously pages his nurse, preventing a fall before it happens.
Original USPTO abstract
A patient safety system including an adjustable bed and a patient monitoring system is disclosed herein. The adjustable bed can automatically adjust to a safe default configuration when the safety system detects that a care provider has left the patient's room or when the safety system detects that the patient is trying to leave the bed. The patient monitoring system can send an alert to the care provider and/or sound an alarm if the patient tries to leave the bed and a care provider is not present with the patient.
Patent details
- Publication number
- US 9,226,696
- Filing date
- 2014-05-12
- Grant date
- 2016-01-05
- Assignee
- Masimo Corporation
- Inventor(s)
- KIANI MASSI JOE E.
- CPC class
- A61B5/1115
Want to file your own patent?
If you're designing assistive furniture or medical devices, use our free scanner to check whether safety features like yours are already claimed by existing patents.
Free patentability scan