The future of healthcare security and safety may include sensors everywhere with information constantly collected and analyzed in a manner of current physical security information management systems. Routines are learned and the system alerts to changes in routine activity. Photo courtesy PRNewsFoto/IBM

If experiments at assisted living facilities are any indication, the future of security and hospital management more broadly will be paved with sensors in every nook and cranny as well as on all types of equipment.

In one project, the University of Alberta, Canada, and Glenrose Rehabilitation Hospital are working with IBM on a pilot aimed at providing researchers and students with insights on how to care for aging populations. IBM software correlates data from sensors capturing patient activity and replicates it in a virtual world using avatars that represent elderly patients in an independent living suite.