High precision monitoring of biometric information such as the weight, body movement and respiratory status

MinebeaMitsumi Inc. (MinebeaMitsumi; Yoshihisa Kainuma, Representative Director, President and Chief Executive Officer) and RICOH Co., Ltd. (RICOH; Yoshinori Yamashita, President and CEO) have concluded a joint business development agreement to commercialize a bed sensor system for monitoring biometric information. It provides a bed sensor system and information service with high added-value by linking MinebeaMitsumi sensor module technology and RICOH Group know-how on systemization technology, production, sales and maintenance support. MinebeaMitsumi and RICOH have concluded this agreement toward commercialization for the nursing care market this fiscal year, with the aim of realizing a business scale of 3 billion yen (nursing care facilities in Japan only) by FY2020.
In the first phase of the project, a monitoring platform to watch over elderly persons will be built through cooperating with various nursing systems in the nursing market. In the second phase, in addition to making it possible to provide heart rate information, we are considering to utilize AI etc., in the nursing and medical markets. In the third phase, we plan to expand the business to an integrated information service platform that utilizes various sensors and position measuring information in nursing care, medical care, child-rearing and other markets.

This bed sensor system provided in the first phase is a high precision monitoring system using sensors that can be retro-fitted onto an existing bed, and enables contactless and non-invasive*1 monitoring of biometric information such as the weight*2, body movement and respiratory status of the person in the bed. It makes possible to "monitor (as a safety measure against falls or toppling over) a person in the nursing/medical care site", "detect anomalies in respiratory status in the nursing/medical care site" and "reduce a burden of measurement and recording work, such as the body weight measurement." We are aiming to have the full-scale development in fiscal year 2018.