Earlysense EverOn

Earlysense EverOn Courtesy Earlysense

The EverOn sensor puts an around-the-clock nurse neear every hospital patient. Nurses typically check heart-rate and breath-analysis monitors of stable patients only every four hours, so a decline in health can go unnoticed in that time. Placed under a patient's mattress, the EverOn mat detects every heartbeat and breath, which it then transmits to a nurse's central computer so that worsening trends can be identified as they develop. Hospitals that tested the gear reported a 60 percent drop in patients who needed to be transferred to intensive care, and the average hospital stay dropped by half a day.

$7,000; earlysense.com