A detection system to monitor and manage falls among wheelchair users: Phase 1

Falls events are common among wheelchair users, and associated with injury, declines in performance of activities of daily living, hospital admissions and admission to long term care facilities. To facilitate successful aging-in-place among individuals in the target population, this project will develop a smart, multi-component system that will accurately detect falls from a wheelchair and notify caregivers to enable a quick response to reduce the amount of time an individual spends lying (“lie time”) on the ground. The first phase of this study (Phase #1) will examine fall acceleration patterns from a wheelchair. This data will be used to develop a prototype customizable fall detection system that is able to accurately detect a fall from a wheelchair. The development and testing of the fall detection prototype will be completed at a later date and is not described in this IRB application.