Abstract
Identification of older people most at risk of falling may facilitate early preventative intervention to reduce the likelihood of falls occurring. While many clinical fall risk assessment techniques exist, they often require subjective assessor interpretation, or are not appropriate for unsupervised screening of larger populations owing to a number of issues including safety, ability to reliably perform the assessment, and requirements for unwieldy apparatus. Researchers have more recently attempted to address some of these deficits by instrumenting new or existing physical fall risk assessments with wearable motion sensors to make such assessments more objective, quicker to administer, and potentially more appropriate for deployment for unsupervised use in the community. The objective of this paper is to discuss various practical questions involving sensor-based fall risk assessment (SFRA). Many of the issues discussed contribute to answering the important question of whether SFRA should or can be used in either a supervised or an unsupervised manner, and what possible deployment scenarios exist for it.
Zusammenfassung
Die Identifikation von älteren Personen mit hohem Sturzrisiko ermöglicht rechtzeitige Präventionsmaßnahmen zur Verringerung der Zahl von Sturzereignissen. Viele der existierenden klinischen Verfahren zur Bestimmung des Sturzrisikos beinhalten die subjektive Interpretation des Untersuchers und sind aus Gründen der Sicherheit, der verlässlichen Durchführbarkeit oder notwendiger apparativer Voraussetzungen nicht für eine Anwendung bei großen Kohorten im nichtklinischen Umfeld geeignet. Wissenschaftler versuchen daher seit einiger Zeit, einige der genannten Defizite durch die Ausstattung mit tragbaren Bewegungssensoren bei der Durchführung existierender oder neuer Verfahren auszugleichen. Diese sollen das Verfahren objektiver, einfacher anwendbar und für die potenzielle nichtklinische Verwendung geeigneter gestalten. Ziel dieses Beitrags ist die Diskussion praktischer Fragen zur Anwendung der sensorbasierten Sturzrisikobestimmung. Besonderes Augenmerk wird auf die wichtigen Fragen gelegt, ob ein solches Verfahren supervidiert oder nicht supervidiert durchgeführt werden kann/sollte und welche möglichen Einsatzszenarien hierfür bestehen.
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Shany, T., Redmond, S., Marschollek, M. et al. Assessing fall risk using wearable sensors: a practical discussion. Z Gerontol Geriat 45, 694–706 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00391-012-0407-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00391-012-0407-2