Improving Resident Safety with Two Innovative Canadian-Made Nurse Call Bell Systems
Nurse call bell systems are critical to ensuring resident safety in long-term care (LTC) settings—facilitating communication between residents and staff and alerting caregivers to urgent events such as falls or elopement. However, traditional systems can be costly to install and maintain, often requiring significant infrastructure upgrades. To address this challenge, the CAN Health Long-Term Care Scaling & Innovation Network partnered with Shannex (New Brunswick and Ontario), Bruyère Health (Ontario), and Covenant Care (Alberta) to explore two Canadian-made solutions tailored for the realities of long-term care.
The challenge
Nurse call bell systems are critical to ensuring resident safety in long-term care (LTC) settings—facilitating communication between residents and staff and alerting caregivers to urgent events such as falls or elopement. However, traditional systems can be costly to install and maintain, often requiring significant infrastructure upgrades which many LTC homes find difficult to implement.
Shannex (New Brunswick and Ontario), Bruyère Health (Ontario), and Covenant Care (Alberta) sought modern, cost-effective solutions that could meet the safety needs of residents and staff—now and into the future.
The solution
Two Canadian companies—Zodiac Light Waves and Tenera Care—have developed nurse call systems tailored for the realities of long-term care.
Zodiac Light Waves developed a pendant-based, wireless nurse call system that is easy to retrofit and compatible with existing infrastructure—eliminating many of the barriers LTC homes face when upgrading legacy systems. With fall detection, location tracking, and integration with portable phones, staff can respond more quickly to emergencies and ensure full facility coverage. Zodiac provides on primus systems with no recurring costs. Its location system is fully on primus and is always fully functional – regardless of internet or power outages.
Tenera Care offers a wearable-based RTLS (real-time location) system with integrated call buttons for residents, staff, and visitors. Designed to enhance safety, efficiency, and care quality, it delivers precise location data, monitors behavioural trends in real time, and generates automated alerts for risks such as elopement, nocturnal waking, hostile interactions and staff emergencies. By providing high quality data, Tenera Care enables targeted, responsive, and well-documented care delivery.
The results
In a CAN Health project with Covenant Living, Zodiac’s solution delivered:
-
Improved resident safety
-
Better staff communication
-
Facility-wide system coverage
Through CAN Health-supported projects with Shannex and Bruyère Health, Tenera Care demonstrated:
-
55% reduction in resident falls
-
60% cost savings compared to alternative solutions
-
100% of resident exits detected in real time
Both systems enhance safety, streamline communication, and reduce response times—while minimizing the need for major infrastructure changes. These scalable, Canadian-made solutions empower LTC homes to modernize their care environments and better protect residents and staff alike.
