Anker's eufy brand brought a fall detection sensor to the IFA electronics show in Berlin, and the notable thing about it is what it leaves out. There is no camera and nothing to wear. According to Engadget, the device uses millimeter-wave radar to watch a room for a person going down, with two-way talk built in so someone can answer.
That design exists because of a stubborn problem with the alternative. A pendant or a watch only helps if it is actually being worn, and the people most likely to leave one in a dresser drawer are the people it was bought for.
A Cambridge study published in the BMJ followed adults over 90 for a year and found that 82 percent of their falls happened when the person was alone. Eighty percent of those who fell were unable to get themselves up at least once. Thirty percent lay on the floor an hour or more.
Wearables also detect a fall roughly the way a car detects a crash, by watching for a sudden impact. That works for a hard drop onto a hard floor. A slow slide out of a chair does not look like an impact at all, which is why a watch will sometimes ask whether its wearer has fallen when nothing happened, then say nothing during the fall that counts. Radar mounted on the wall is not reading a wrist. It is watching the whole room, including the corner of it where the pendant is sitting in a drawer.
The Cambridge researchers found it was the time on the floor, not the fall, that tracked with the worst outcomes: serious injury, admission to the hospital, and moves into long-term care.
Rick Good spent ten years in the newspaper business, including with The News & Observer (Raleigh, NC) and The Greenville News (Greenville, SC). He co-wrote, with Melinda Coleman, Rutledge to Riley: Governors of South Carolina, 1776–Present (Published by The Greenville News), and is the author of Mind Games Trivia #1 (Amazon). He has recently spent 15 years creating original trivia content through Sounds Good Mobile Entertainment and continues that with his new company, SGME Software. He edits The Smart Reader’s money, real estate, and business coverage.
