Healthcare & Pharmaceuticals
Fall-Safe Assist
A fall detection sensor embedded in a high-tech hip protector that responds to every fall by capturing the data and sending alarm messages to emergency service and to neighbours, c ...
Field of Expertise
Wearable technology for medical devices
Expertise
The technological challenge is first, to detect with 100% accuracy every fall and record its characteristics for subsequent analysis, without generating any false alarms, and second, to monitor the gait of the device wearer to immediately detect any anomalies that might presage a fall in order to send an alarm message to a carer/nurse. Uniquely, HIP embeds a fall detection and monitoring sensor in the hip protector pads that HIP already supplies across the world, see Appendix for system diagram. This approach has never been attempted before and is protected by HIP’s patents in UK, Europe, USA. Fall detection devices, incorporated in pendants and wristwatches from suppliers such as Tunstall, Philips and Apple tend to generate large numbers of false positive alarms for every fall detected – since, unlike HIP’s device located on the hip, they are not located on the most stable parts of the body. This invalidates their use, especially in healthcare institutions. They do not capture falls data, nor do they monitor the wearer’s gait, so they are limited to after-the-event signalling, which has no falls preventive capability. Nor do they prevent any damage to the body in a fall. Simple hip protectors have no falls detection nor falls monitoring capability. HIP has already developed, tested and marketed its hip protectors around the world, has modified them to hold the fall detection sensor firmly, has successfully tested the fall detection from the hip location capability that it commissioned, and has produced and tested the falls data capture system. The falls data comprises the time/date, location, direction and force of the fall. It may also include general anonymised data on the faller, such as age and any chronic conditions, together with salient environmental factors. As well as developing this product, called Fall-Safe Assist, HIP has created a specimen falls database on the cloud and linked that to the sensor devices. This will be accessed by researchers to identify predictors of falls and enable action to be taken, which may be monitored. HIP will develop as part of the deliverable of the project, the real-time gait analysis software module running in the sensor to monitor the wearer’s gait, using 6 elements, such as degree of sway and/or step cadence etc., to identify any anomalies outside the norm that might indicate a fall is likely. This has not been done before and is also therefore highly innovative.