Using an inertial motion unit to find the optimal location to continuously monitor for near falls

The world population is ageing and a key hazard to healthy ageing is falls. The consequences of falls can be costly to health and social care systems. Falls can be prevented by continuously monitoring of older people for near falls, as they are a major risk factor for falls. This preliminary study’s aim was to find the optimal placement of a monitoring device to detect falls, as this is the first step towards understanding how to detect a near fall. This study involved one participant wearing four commercially available motion trackers simultaneously. The participant performed five controlled sideways falls onto a crash mat. The motion trackers were controlled using the associated software that also logged the data. The results presented display the accelerometer and gyroscope data for falls at the four locations (wrist, waist, ankle, and thigh). The data shows monitoring at the thigh gives the most consistent pattern per fall for both the accelerometer and gyroscope data