Sensors in house could predict if elderly will fall 3 weeks in advance
A REVOLUTIONARY home monitoring system can predict when an elderly person will suffer a fall – up to three weeks in advance.
Infra-red monitors can detect subtle changes that foretell with a high degree of accuracy the health changes that put an old person at risk of collapse.
The device measures walking speed and length of stride within the home. Experts found small changes can predict if an elderly person is becoming very frail and about to suffer a dangerous fall.
The pioneering system, which would use sensors in each room of the house, allows medical experts to intervene before a potentially lethal collapse occurs.
It automatically triggers an alert by text or email for doctors to help when potential health changes are detected. By preventing falls, old people could live independently for up to two and a half years longer on average, research suggests.
A person’s risk of falling goes up more than four times if their walking speed slows.
Researchers found pensioners had an 86 per cent chance of falling within three weeks if their strides decreased by 5.1cm per second over the course of a week.
By comparison the risk of falling was just 20 per cent in those with no changes of stride. Falls are one of the main causes of broken hips in the UK and can reveal undiagnosed health problems.
One in three pensioners have fallen at least once in the past year – with a cost to the NHS of about £2.36billion a year.
Lead researcher professor Marjorie Skubic, from the University of Missouri, discussed the system at the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s annual meeting in Boston, Massachusetts.
She devised the system after her mother-in-law suffered a bad fall and damaged her shoulder.
Professor Skubic said: ‘If you ask people where they want to age, they say they want to age in their own home. They do not want to move.’
Professor Skubic used the system to help 23 pensioners with an average age of 85.
Those monitored by the technology stayed in their own home for an average of 4.3 years, compared to 1.8 years for those who had no sensors installed.
The system can also alert doctors when a fall does occur.
Caroline Abrahams, Charity Director at Age UK said: ‘Falls are the most frequent cause of emergency hospital admissions for older people and a serious threat to their health and independence, causing pain, distress and loss of confidence.
However, despite having serious consequences falls in later life are often dismissed as an inevitable part of growing older, when the reality is they are preventable.