Abstract
Falls among older people are a major economic and public health problem. Due to the demographic change and aging of populations, there is an urgent need for accurate screening tools to identify those at risk to target effective falls prevention strategies. Clinical fall risk assessments are costly and time-consuming and thus cannot be performed frequently. Technologies provide means for assessing fall risk during daily living, making self-evaluations and fast methods for fall risk assessment for professional use.
 This study collects and evaluates existing technological solutions for fall risk assessment including various different sensor technologies. The study also presents one easy to use solution for assessing fall risk and suggests a concept-design for integrating sensor-based solutions into the Finnish national Kanta Personal Health Record.
 The optimal solution for technological fall risk assessment is still unclear. A wide implementation still requires extensive validation studies, adoption to health care processes and novel IoT -solutions for collecting large amounts of sensor data. Thorough methods should be utilised in designing the privacy and security aspects of fall risk assessment solutions, as well as different user profiles, to allow suitable interfaces and visualisations to users. It should always be clear what kind of data are collected from users and how the data are utilised. The consent of the users should also always be collected.
Highlights
One third of people over 65 years old fall at least once each year [1] and the number of falls per year increases with age and frailty level [2]
We made an additional search for specific technologies separately, e.g., “ultra wide band radar and fall risk assessment”
The selection of articles for technologies for fall risk assessment was made by selecting those articles, which presented results of utilising a technology for fall risk assessment
Summary
One third of people over 65 years old fall at least once each year [1] and the number of falls per year increases with age and frailty level [2]. Hip fracture with consequent impaired functional ability and quality of life and financial burden for the society is one of the most serious fall injuries. The cost of care during the first year after a hip fracture was 30258€ during years 2011-2013 € in Finland [4]. The world’s population is ageing rapidly; the number of people aged 65 or older is expected to grow from 524 million in 2010 to nearly 1.5 billion in 2050 [5]. One consequence of population’s ageing is that the resources for care will be limited. At the same time costs produced by falls increase rapidly, and prevention becomes crucial. Large-scale assessment of the older population by clinicians consumes resources and public funding and novel, less consuming methods are needed
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