Wearable Device Can Predict Older Adults' Risk of Falling

A study published in Nature Digital Medicine details how a wearable device can predictively determine older adults' risk of falling, reports EurekAlert . Participants included 67 women older than 60 who were tested on their walking ability and asked about the number of falls they had experienced in the past 12 months. They wore a small device equipped with accelerometers that measured their walking patterns for seven days. The researchers learned that data extracted automatically from the devices could accurately predict participants' risk of falling, as measured by physical analyses in standing and walking. "Our prediction showed that we could very accurately tell the difference between people that were really stable and people that were unstable in some way," says Bruce Schatz with the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Urbana-Champaign. He envisions the successful results of the study as a indication that more wearable devices, or even smartphone apps, will in the future be able to measure walking patterns and alert users of their risk of falling.