By Gary M. Kaye
Editor, Tech50+ (www.tech50plus.com)
We all know that falls are a major health risk for anyone over 65 years of age. But just how much of a problem may surprise you. Here are some pretty frightening statistics from the National Council on Aging:
But many, if not most, of these falls can be prevented. Sometimes it’s a simple thing like turning on a nightlight before getting out of bed. Other times, it might take a gait analysis. Now, AARP and United Healthcare are betting $65,000 that an open competition can come up with new solutions to prevent falls.
Ultimate goal: stop falls
The AARP/United Healthcare “Falls Prevention Challenge” is being run by OpenIDEO, an organization that tries to apply design approaches to solving major world problems. The Challenge offers two prizes, $50,000 for the falls prevention solution that’s most likely to be viable in the marketplace, and $25,000 for the solution that appears the most promising, whether or not it is currently ready for market, or even a pilot program.
I spoke with Sanjay Khurana, vice president of AARP Caregiving Products & Services, who said traditionally, the emphasis around falls has been on falls detection and treatment, and not enough about prevention.
“We always looked for “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up,” but what about getting people to help prevent [themselves] from falling?” Khurana said. “Where’s that fit for senior adults that gives them that awareness of their own strength, muscle strength, their gait, balance.
“When we do all of our research we found that the top two concerns family caregivers have – and this is no surprise – that number one, they want ways to monitor and maintain [their] loved one’s health,” Khurana continued. “ The second one is knowing [their] loved one is safe when [they are] not around. And then we dig deeper into the latter, [and] it comes down to fall prevention and there’s a heightened awareness – both in family caregivers and in loved ones – that they know they want to stay safe in the home because they value independent living, but really, we as a market have not provided them the tools to really give them this empowerment approach.
“Here’s how you really discover your gait and your balance and your home hazards and you really change your behavior so you can improve your lifestyle and continue to have an improved quality of life,’ he said of the Challenge.
Khurana said AARP is hoping the Falls Prevention Challenge will bring more people into the mix to find solutions,
“We think that, for us, the challenge is to bring a cross-section of the industry from designers to entrepreneurs to researchers to technicians to clinicians and kind of bring this interdisciplinary [approach] together to start a dialogue, start bringing some of this innovation to market. Our goal is to really help shepherd some of this thought process to cross-sectional solutions in the market,” he said.
Is tech the key?
Khurana said the popularity of fitness trackers – and their ability to be reconfigured for gait analysis– is just one example of how technology may be used to help prevent falls.
“I think there’s going to be a natural evolution where the holy grail is going to be prediction, but the basic baby steps first are to really leverage the power of the technology, drive better awareness because what activity trackers have done for healthy living – now we can dispute whether they’re effective or not – but as has happened in the activity tracker space, there has been a benchmark around how do you measure your activity through steps.
“Now I’m not saying whether that’s right or wrong – I look at it as what are steps to healthy living, what is the equivalent for [the elder] population to prevent falls. What is that gait metrics, that balance metrics, where people go, ‘I know where I stand in my balance and gait,’ so we eventually want to get to that point,” he said.
In that vein, Khurana noted the Centers for Disease Control already has a program, not technology based, to help anticipate falls.
“It’s a very simple self-reported test that a lot of clinicians and occupational therapists use, “ he said. “ It’s a very simple assessment of your risk profile. And these are evidence-based tests that are performed in clinical settings. [For] some of those, there is a lot of good science and evidence-based protocols out there in the community that need to come out into the commercial side.
“We really think there’s a great way to leverage the science that’s out there and marry it with some of the technology,” Khurana said.
And while some of those formulating the Falls Prevention Challenge are expecting a technology solution, Khurana said it might be something quite different.
“One of the things we’ve recognized is that technology is not the be all end all for a lot of solutions,” he said. “Very often we find utilities that are the education and awareness where technology may play a role, [or] may not.
“We really would like to lead this [Challenge] a little more wide open. I think from an innovation point of view, from a market point of view, we don’t want to be so prescriptive that we leave out simple solutions that may not use technology so we’re going to leave that a little bit open ended.” He said.
Khurana cited a story about how a simple observation helped one Parkinson’s patient without using any technology,
“There was this product designer and she had a grandfather who had Parkinson’s. When you have Parkinson’s, you have limited mobility because of tremor, and her grandfather would use a walker and while walking around the house would have difficulty with speed because of tremor. But she found that every time he walked down the stairs he would have no problem.
“So there was something about the motion of walking down the stairs that made him walk differently and that’s when the light bulb went off.” He continued. “What she did was print a mosaic of stairs and she glued it to the floor and now the grandfather uses it to walk with the walker and his walking is much improved. So this is where there’s no technology but it’s really designed thinking.”
One of the issues that Falls Prevention Challenge hopes to deal with is getting solutions that can scale to the entire market. Khurana pointed out that there’s plenty of information out there on simple, utilitarian steps that can help prevent falls, but it’s not being widely disseminated.
“[The Center for Disease control] has some great information on their website for some of the awareness utilities, as well as [the National Institutes of Health, which] has something called Go For Life that has simple exercises for strength, balance, and endurance.
“I was very surprised,” Khurana admitted. “Actually, a lot of the community centers and senior living facilities have a hard copy of that book. As a matter of fact, my mother gave it to me; she said ‘You should look at this.’ and I said. ‘Wow, that’s exactly the kind of awareness we’re looking to build and bring to caregivers … that’s exactly the purpose of this exercise, to bring awareness around simple utility, but also drive awareness around at scale.’
“It’s good to have this information and booklets in places, but how do you get them to that scale. That’s really the purpose of the caregiving initiative that we have at AARP is to really drive awareness to practical solutions and resources for caregivers and that’s the intent of this,” he added.
Results of the Falls Prevention Challenge will be announced in June. You can find more information about the Challenge at:
https://challenges.openideo.com/challenge/fall-prevention/ideas
And there are great tips from the Centers For Disease Control here:
https://www.cdc.gov/homeandrecreationalsafety/falls/
Gary Kaye is the creator of Tech50+ (www.tech50plus.com), the leading website covering technology from the Baby Boomer perspective. Kaye has been covering high tech for more than 30 years with outlets including NBC, ABC, CNN and Fox Business. He is a regular contributor to AARP and other websites on issues regarding the nexus of technology, seniors and baby boomers.
