Older adult falls are a major health issue. One in four older adults will fall each year — that’s 36 million falls, leading to more than 30,000 deaths. And the financial costs are staggering — over $50 billion spent on medical costs related to falls, with about a quarter of that burden falling on private or out-of-pocket payers. It’s no surprise, then, that much of the focus of health monitoring or tracking systems revolves around falls.
The first generation of products were wearables that could respond to a fall (and the injury or immobilization of the who fell) by sounding an alarm, heard by a remote person or persons designated by the system, who would then summon timely help. The wearables gradually became more robust, and tracked more than just falls; some measured heart beat or pulse rate or other health-related data.
The next generation was to place the sensors in locations in and around the home. These so-called passive monitors eliminated the problem of individuals’ forgetting to wear, or activate, the sensors. They could monitor movement and record not only falls but irregular motion or activity, and automatically issue alerts to the designate recipients.
Both wearable and passive systems are widely in use. But now the systems are leveraging AI to create deep “baseline” understanding of the mobility, movements, and habits of the subject, and then combine those learned insights with data of the moment to actually predict future falls (and other risks of cognitive and physical decline).
And by “system” we mean just that — some of the applications combine wearables with thermal sensors, sound sensors, gyroscopes and microphones. “The concept is to combine motion and sound data to provide a clearer picture of the user’s condition.”
Here’s just one of many reports on these developments. It’s good to see all this action developments because it directly addresses one of the 7 A’s of SuperAging, as outlined in our book: Autonomy. Living independently is a vital component of “getting older without getting old,” and it’s absolutely appropriate to leverage every available piece of technology. We’ll certainly keep you posted on future developments!