Real-Time Locating Systems (RTLS) to Improve Fall Detection
By Bowen, Mary Elizabeth; Craighead, Jeffrey; Wingrave, Chadwick, A.; Kearns, William D.; Gerontechnology, Volume 9, Number 4, pages 464-471Publication Date: October 2010
Study evaluated a Real Time Locating System (RTLS) as a tool to accurately detect a fall. A lab equipped with four active Ubisense RTLS sensors was used. This system is typically used to track asset movement, such as goods in a warehouse. The ultra-wideband radio signals used by Ubisense are highly resistant to obstruction and attenuation because of their innate characteristics which allow better penetration of walls and furniture and tracking of large areas. As such, one system could potentially cover multiple rooms in a home or nursing facility. Phase I of the study used a mannequin to determine the feasibility of RTLS to detect a fall from three positional conditions: standing, seated in a wheelchair, and lying on a bed. Phase II used a human participant to be an ecologically valid simulation of a fall from these conditions. Ten trials of each of these three conditions were conducted in each phase. The observed time of the fall was compared with the RTLS tag position. A Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve was used to report the Area Under the Curve (AUC) with 95 percent confidence intervals, and Cohen’s kappa was used to examine inter-rater reliability between the observed fall and the fall detected by the RTLS. RTLS accurately identified 89 percent of the mannequin falls and 80 percent of the human falls. Across subjects there were low false positive rates; 17 percent for the mannequin and 16 percent for the human participant. Inter-rater reliability was very good for mannequin falls and good for human falls.
Published by: International Society for Gerontechnology (Website:http://www.gerontechnology.info)
International Society for Gerontechnology (Web Site: http://www.gerontechnology.info )
Link to text: http://gerontechnology.info/index.php/journal/article/view/gt.2010.09.04.005.00/1383
