A young leukemia survivor in Australia has created a low cost smart inclining bed for nursing homes which he says can help prevent patients from falling and also pressure sores.

Nikhil Autar, who was diagnosed with leukaemia at the age of 17, was inspired to pursue an idea to create affordable hospital beds after he lost a couple of his friends to preventable incidences. "One was 28 when she fell in the bathroom. Being a medical researcher, I had the ability to look through papers and start reading into these preventable things some of the biggest killers are things like falls and pressure sores," he said.

Autar, a medical student of the University of New Southwales (UNSW), said that hospital beds reduce the rates of falls by 30 per cent when compared with facilities equipped with generic beds. "When I looked up the literature, I saw that facilities with hospital beds had lower rates of falls because they help people sit up and get up that's how the Smart Inclining Beds came to be," he added.

The 25-year-old founded the startup - Get To Sleep Easy - with the University of NSW Business School student Sachin Kinger creating smart beds at a fraction of the cost of expensive hospital beds. "Hospital beds are too big, too clunky, too expensive, and mats that can detect pressure sores cost around 6000 dollars a pop," he said.

"We invented the Smart Inclining Bed, a device that sits on top of your bed and doesn't require a frame. It uses a combination of motors and air inflation to lift you up which reduces the price point to a tenth of a hospital bed," Autar was qouted as saying by the UNSW. The bed is accompanied by a mobile app "Centred Around You" that uses proprietary technology to map patients' movements, breathing patterns and heartbeat.

"The app can alert nurses, as well as loved ones, that someone is at risk of a pressure sore, if they've fallen or if they've stopped breathing," the UNSW student said. Pressure sores and pneumonia are some of the biggest killers in Australian hospitals and nursing homes. "Pressure sores cost Australia 1.6 billion dollars annually, they can take years to heal and I've had a few myself," Autar said.

"We want to make something that will actually help doctors so they can focus on those harder patients to treat and give them more time when they need to. Pneumonia often can't be prevented, but encouraging people to sit up reduces time spent in hospital by 35 per cent," he said.

"I knew from having pressure sores and pneumonia myself that this was such a big problem and that it took so much time, money and resources out of places," he added.

Autar said the company was working with world's leading researchers and doctors in the Clinical Excellence Commission of Australia, Liverpool Hospital and some researchers overseas as well at the University of Pennsylvania. He plans to expand "Get To Sleep Easy" to take on the future aging population in the developing world.

"We are making medical devices and working with developing world NGOs to create affordable hospital beds that reduces rates of complications," the founder said.

"The big long-term goal is bridging the gap between home and health care that currently exists because the aging population is set to double by 2030. In the developing world there are higher life expectancies, so there will be another boom in aging populations that comes in," Autar said.