Abstract
This paper presents a state-of-the-art survey of smartphone (SP)-based solutions for fall detection and prevention. Falls are considered as major health hazards for both the elderly and people with neurodegenerative diseases. To mitigate the adverse consequences of falling, a great deal of research has been conducted, mainly focused on two different approaches, namely, fall detection and fall prevention. Required hardware for both fall detection and prevention are also available in SPs. Consequently, researchers' interest in finding SP-based solutions has increased dramatically over recent years. To the best of our knowledge, there has been no published review on SP-based fall detection and prevention. Thus in this paper, we present the taxonomy for SP-based fall detection and prevention solutions and systematic comparisons of existing studies. We have also identified three challenges and three open issues for future research, after reviewing the existing articles. Our time series analysis demonstrates a trend towards the integration of external sensing units with SPs for improvement in usability of the systems.
Highlights
Falls are defined as the inadvertent settling down of a body on the ground, floor or other lower level
Fall prevention systems are usually based on the assessment of the medical and behavioral histories of users in order to predict the possible risk of falls
Fall detection systems try to detect the occurrence of fall events accurately by extracting the features from the acquired output signal(s)/data of the sensor(s) and identifying fall events from other activities of daily living (ADL)
Summary
Falls are defined as the inadvertent settling down of a body on the ground, floor or other lower level. Insights gained from research in this area by industry and academics will assist community, public health leaders and health care professionals in developing more efficacious intervention strategies to prevent or reduce falls, and its associated psychological, physical and economical consequences. Fall prevention systems are usually based on the assessment of the medical and behavioral histories of users in order to predict the possible risk of falls Most of these fall management technologies consist of three common functional units: a sensing/data-acquisition unit, processing unit and communication unit. SPs are more integrated than a dedicated monitoring device which reduces rejection due to the device’s poor aesthetic value and intrusiveness [11] For these and many other reasons, the number of studies on SP-based fall management has increased steadily in recent years. The concluding part—Section 5—points out important observations and areas that need further research
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