title: Sensitivity and specificity of fall detection in people aged 40 years and over.
abstract: About one third of home-dwelling people over 65 years of age fall each year. Falling, and the fear of falling, is one of the major health risks that affects the quality of life among older people, threatening their independent living. In our pilot study, we found that fall detection with a waist-worn triaxial accelerometer is reliable with quite simple detection algorithms. The aim of this study was to validate the data collection of a new fall detector prototype and to define the sensitivity and specificity of different fall detection algorithms with simulated falls from 20 middle-aged (40-65 years old) test subjects. Activities of daily living (ADL) performed by the middle-aged subjects, and also by 21 older people (aged 58-98 years) from a residential care unit, were used as a reference. The results showed that the hardware platform and algorithms used can discriminate various types of falls from ADL with a sensitivity of 97.5% and a specificity of 100%. This suggests that the present concept provides an effective method for automatic fall detection.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical Technology, Institute of Biomedicine, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland. maarit.kangas@oulu.fi
authors.forename: Maarit
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kangas
authors.forename: Irene
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Vikman
authors.forename: Jimmie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wiklander
authors.forename: Per
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Lindgren
authors.forename: Lars
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Nyberg
authors.forename: Timo
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Jämsä
mesh_terms: D000054:Acceleration; D000058:Accidental Falls / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D000061:Accidents, Home / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D000203:Activities of Daily Living; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000465:Algorithms; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D018670:Monitoring, Ambulatory / Q000295:instrumentation*; D010865:Pilot Projects; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity