Extending the range of home tele-services that can be brought to today's patients.

 

March 2010
Falls Among the Elderly: Key is Prevention, Not Detection

Falls are the greatest risk to good, maintained health for millions of elderly Americans living at home today. Figures on numbers of fractures, debilitating episodes, and very high costs for all of these incidents speak volumes about this widespread problem [1]. One response: the occasional fanfare about wellness programs for seniors, and exercise and Tai Chi classes, among other self improvement classes marketed for them as if they were young and nimble adults.

Yes, these help. But keep in mind: program participants are among the 5500 Americans who turn 65 years old each day [2], many of whom also need a watchful eye and other assistance to live safely in their own homes—hands down the preferred place of residence by the elderly.

And so, now we need to know: How is home telehealth assisting in making day-to-day life safer for elders living at home and needing assistance with their balance? What’s working in assisting with providing communications about impending falls, or better, preventing, these falls from happening in the first place?

This installment of the Home Telehealth Community of Care will address these and other concerns, in the following segments:

Plain Vanilla Telehealth An overview of day-to-day use of telehealth assisters on the falls battlefield.	Prevention 101 A look at much-needed, developing tools and applications that aim toward moving beyond the “Help, I’ve fallen…” at-home scenario for falls communications devices.
Look Homeward Here, find expert advice about providing fall prevention instruction and care, sometimes telehealthcare, to elderly residents living at home.	Coming Home Join telecare industry expert and medical engineer Dr. Kevin Doughty, who describes the need for widespread education and noninvasive tools for fall prevention.

Questions for you, the reader: How did we do? What did we miss?

Links:

1. The widespread problem of numbers of injured and costs are provided by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) on various sites related to falls and the elderly. One of these is: http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/factsheets/falls.htm Retrieved Feb.10, 2010.
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2. Cited in U.S. Dept. of Commerce. Bureau of the Census (1993). Sixty-Five Plus in America. Washington, DC: GPO.
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