Barron Associates’ Hospital Fall Detection System Successfully Completes Hospital Field Trial

Falls represent a significant healthcare problem with substantial associated morbidity and mortality. In an inpatient environment, it is necessary to identify injurious falls quickly to reduce the potential for serious or fatal injuries. Falls are consistently the most frequently reported adverse event in hospitals; up to 20% of patients fall at least once during their hospitalization, with higher proportions among those with cognitive impairment. Falls are major contributors to disability, result in physical and emotional injury, and are a leading cause of death in older adults.

Barron Associates has developed the FallCall system, which embodies a wearable instrument and supporting infrastructure for use by healthcare providers to detect and report falls and their locations expeditiously in order to improve staff response time and minimize the potential for patient injury after a fall occurs. The FallCall system also improves fall reporting, which is an essential component of all hospital fall prevention programs.

The FallCall system was deployed in a fall laboratory with 20 participants and in a live hospital field trial with 50 inpatients. The Laboratory Fall Study resulted in a fall sensitivity of 99.4% and a specificity of 99.5%. The laboratory fall study represents one of the most comprehensive fall studies performed by researchers to date, including many types of falls not normally evaluated in the literature, such as falls down walls or against furniture. The Hospital Field Trial resulted in a very low false alarm rate of only 0.003 false alarms per hour. The system was also evaluated by hospital field trial patients for usability, resulting in a System Usability Scale score in the top 5th percentile across commercial products and rating an “A+” according to normative data.