Conference Publication Details
Mandatory Fields
Bourke A.;Van De Ven P.;Chaya A.;ÓLaighin G.;Nelson J.
Proceedings of the 30th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, EMBS'08 - "Personalized Healthcare through Technology"
The design and development of a long-term fall detection system incorporated into a custom vest for the elderly
2008
December
Published
1
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Optional Fields
2836
2839
A fall detection system and algorithm, incorporated into a custom designed garment has been developed. The developed fall detection system uses a tri-axial accelerometer, microcontroller, battery and Bluetooth module. This sensor is attached to a custom designed vest, designed to be worn by the elderly person under clothing. The fall detection algorithm was developed and incorporates both impact and posture detection capability. The vest and fall algorithm was tested on young healthy subjects performing normal activities of daily living (ADL) and falls onto crash mats, while wearing the vest and sensor. Results show that falls can be distinguished from normal activities with a sensitivity >90% and a specificity of >99%, from a total data set of 264 falls and 165 normal ADL. By incorporating the fall-detection sensor into a custom designed garment it is anticipated that greater compliance when wearing a fall-detection system can be achieved and will help reduce the incidence of the long-lie, when falls occur in the elderly population. However further long-term testing using elderly subjects is required to validate the systems performance. © 2008 IEEE.
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