The Future of Fall Management

Some of our favorite innovations were featured at the Consumer Electronics Show 2021, which was (appropriately enough) a virtual gathering this year. Among the array of senior-friendly new devices — things like automated home gardens, AI food scanners and smart vitamin bottles — the event featured cutting-edge businesses offering tech that can help seniors with one of the leading causes of hospitalization among older Americans: falls.

Here are our top three tech picks to help keep seniors safe.

1. Radar Love

Canadian business Xandar Kardian, Inc. uses radar to monitor a room and the people within it. According to the company, the technology is able to detect the presence of individuals, the number of individuals and certain statistics about their well-being. The company claims that their wall-mounted devices are sensitive enough not only to determine the number of people in the room but also measure the heart rate and breathing patterns of each individual occupant. Because this technology doesn’t rely on cameras or listening devices, it may provide a less obtrusive way to monitor for falls or other health emergencies.

2. All Buttoned Up

BioIntelliSense offers a little sticker that could make a big impact. The company’s BioButton devices can be attached to a patient’s clothes to help provide physicians with a way to monitor patient health remotely — even patients living at home. According to the company, these devices are able to continuously measure temperature, heart rate and respiratory rate at rest with clinical accuracy, and they track this data over time to uncover trends that may indicate a health problem. Additionally, the company claims that its BioSticker product can be affixed to a patient’s chest to help monitor body position, activity levels, and sleep status for up to 30 days before needing to be replaced. The BioSticker also features high-resolution gait analysis and fall detection. 

3. A Balancing Act

Zibrio, Inc. has created a smart scale that can not only tell a user their weight; it can also record micro-patterns of stance to help evaluate users’ balance and stability. According to the company, the system’s algorithms give the user a balance score and a fall probability score, which, when partnered with the companion Balance Coach app, can be used to help create a personalized wellness plan. These scores are tracked over time with the goal of helping improve autonomy. And that’s not all this wonder-scale can do: the company claims it can also monitor users for signs of potential congestive heart failure.

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