Fall-related gerontechnology preventing falls among the elderly for ageing-in-place
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Abstract
Population ageing is becoming a major social in many parts of the world, recent developments in the field of an ageing society thus have led to a renewed interest in safety among the elderly people. Since ageing affects both the physical changes and the psychological changes, the daily basic activities may be concerned regarding fall accident in the elderly who decide to live in their home when they get old called ageing-in-place. The technology of specific design through ergonomics along with gerontechnology which technology and service support the older adults therefore can reduce the risk and accident in the older people. The purpose of this review was to examine the identification of the technology and service that the gerontechnology has developed in independent living for the elderly concerning fall accident. The benefit and drawback of fall-related gerontechnologies which are fall prevention, fall detection and fall monitoring were also represented in this review. However, although the gerontechnology has successfully demonstrated that the technology and service can assist older adult, it has certain limitations in terms of the user acceptance and usability of technology including individual preferences. Regarding fall detectors, although floor detector, vibration detector and motion detector provide the privacy condition as the main concern to elderly, the other factors such as the complication in collecting the fall datasets, the various ways of fall and the number of datasets should be still considered. Additional research should be conducted on these and a survey of user's satisfaction including exploring the use of other types of assistive technology in helping and easing the responsibilities for a medical field at the hospitals or nursing care.
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