Laura Ibeas, with a degree in Physics, is the founder of Ingevital, a wireless radar solution to help care for the elderly in a non-intrusive way, bringing peace of mind to their families and caregivers. Ingevital was born to respond to the problems encountered in nursing homes, hospitals and even private homes. In this interview, Laura will talk about Ingevital, technology in the service of health, health, entrepreneurship and much more.

What is Ingevital?
Ingevital is a wireless radar system for non-intrusive detection of life presence and falls. It is a system that can be installed in homes and residences, and allows the resident to monitor without taking anything, how he spends the night, how he sleeps, moves a lot, gets out of bed, falls when getting out of bed... In addition, cardiac and respiratory it gives you an estimate of the frequency, and with all this data we create a series of alarms, both predictive and reactive, and thus protect people's night.

Taking advantage of the Doppler effect, the micro-movements of the body are seen and all the information is collected from there. A radar is placed on the ceiling and another on the headboard, and with these two, we can monitor everything that happens in bed.

How did you come up with the idea?
We come from a leading company that is highly dedicated to video analytics and video surveillance. We had a client, a nursing home, who asked us if we could solve a bed-walk detection problem with video analytics. We started researching, looking, and it was very expensive. So we found these radars with different applications, to monitor apneas... The development is very short, and so is the commercialization. We ordered them to be tested, and it can be seen that they work very well.

Starting from that, we created a whole startup to be able to market all this matter, because it has nothing to do with the main company, and we prefer to start as a spin-off and do an intra-entrepreneurship. We started in May last year; so we are in full development. We have set up two pilots in the residences, and now we are drawing conclusions, making improvements and trying to introduce the product to the rest of the residences. In parallel, we have started developing the product for the home.

What benefits and advantages does Ingevital offer compared to other senior care systems?
What we are saying is that we will mainly try to introduce prediction models, in addition to the existing one, which is the pure detection of falling, rising or not in bed. Then giving you more data that helps you see the overall condition of the person, how the medication is affecting them, if they've had a bad night... it gives you a lot more data than the current systems. A bed sense tells you if he's in bed, but it doesn't tell you if he's been really nervous or if he's gone to the bathroom, or if someone's been to the bathroom for half an hour and fell in there. We provide much more complete information. In this sense, I think we provide better well-being and greater peace of mind.