Authors:
Hugo Silva
1
;
Filipe Silva
1
;
Hugo Gamboa
1
and
Vítor Viegas
2
Affiliations:
1
PLUX – Biosensor Engineering, Portugal
;
2
EST – IPS, Portugal
Keyword(s):
Healthcare, Quality of Life, Accelerometry, Biomechanics, Kinematics.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Biomechanical Devices
;
Biomedical Engineering
;
Biomedical Instruments and Devices
;
Biotelemetry
;
Devices
;
Health Monitoring Devices
;
Human-Computer Interaction
;
Physiological Computing Systems
;
Wireless Systems
Abstract:
Accidental falls are among one of the main causes of death and disability on elderly people. This stands both as a healthcare problem, in the sense that, upon falling, if individuals are not assisted in an early stage severe long term consequences may arise; and as a limitation for the individual’s daily life, in the sense that they generally deprive themselves of regular routines as a preventive measure to avoid falling. In this paper we describe a hardware unit conceived to automatically detect fall events, and trigger a set of alert actions which allow the remote detection of the occurrence and facilitate rapid assistance.