Development of a Real-Time Wearable Fall Detection System in the Context of Internet of Things

Abstract

Fall detection is of increasing significance in terms of the health monitoring of the elderly and disabled people, as falls may lead to physical injuries or even mental trauma. The existing fall detection methods have achieved impressive performance, but limitations present in operability, interface with public healthcare systems, and other technical issues such as high-power consumption, cost, and reliability. In this article, we present a wearable fall detection system, which is based on a novel multilevel threshold algorithm. The algorithm combines micro-electro-mechanical-systems (MEMS) with narrow band Internet of Things (NB-IoT). The system also includes a user interface for healthcare professionals, developed based on the cloud technology and server-client architecture. For the verification of the algorithm, we recruited 20 volunteers to perform the activities of daily living and falls. The experimental result showed that the proposed algorithm can achieve an accuracy of 94.88%, a sensitivity of 95.25%, and a specificity of 94.5%, suggesting the effectiveness of our system.