WRIST-WORN FALL DETECTION DEVICE - Development and Preliminary Evaluation

Mattia Bertschi, Leopoldo Rossini

2009

Abstract

Falls are the most important cause of accidents for elderly people and often result in serious physical and psychological consequences. The rapid growth of the elderly population increases the magnitude of the problem as well as the generated costs. In order to take care of old people living by themselves or in care centres and to reduce the consequences of a fall, various technological solutions have been studied, however none led to a commercial product fulfilling user requirements. In this work we present an automatic fall detector in the form of a wrist watch which could lead to better life conditions for the elderly. Our device implements functionalities such as wireless communication, automatic fall detection, manual alarm triggering, data storage, and simple user interface. Even though the wrist is probably the most difficult measurement location on the body to discern a fall event, the proposed detection algorithm shows encouraging results (90% sensitivity, 97% specificity) with the signals of our database.

References

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Paper Citation


in Harvard Style

Bertschi M. and Rossini L. (2009). WRIST-WORN FALL DETECTION DEVICE - Development and Preliminary Evaluation . In Proceedings of the International Conference on Biomedical Electronics and Devices - Volume 1: BIODEVICES, (BIOSTEC 2009) ISBN 978-989-8111- 64-7, pages 368-371. DOI: 10.5220/0001540903680371


in Bibtex Style

@conference{biodevices09,
author={Mattia Bertschi and Leopoldo Rossini},
title={WRIST-WORN FALL DETECTION DEVICE - Development and Preliminary Evaluation},
booktitle={Proceedings of the International Conference on Biomedical Electronics and Devices - Volume 1: BIODEVICES, (BIOSTEC 2009)},
year={2009},
pages={368-371},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0001540903680371},
isbn={978-989-8111- 64-7},
}


in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the International Conference on Biomedical Electronics and Devices - Volume 1: BIODEVICES, (BIOSTEC 2009)
TI - WRIST-WORN FALL DETECTION DEVICE - Development and Preliminary Evaluation
SN - 978-989-8111- 64-7
AU - Bertschi M.
AU - Rossini L.
PY - 2009
SP - 368
EP - 371
DO - 10.5220/0001540903680371