Developing a Daily-use Fall Risk Assessment Device in Clinical Setting

N/ANot Yet RecruitingNCT06767163

The University of Hong Kong20 enrolled

Overview

Study Objectives Objective 1: Compare the fall risk assessment results between balance sensors, traditional tests, and clinical diagnoses. Objective 2: Improve the feasibility of using sensors to assess fall risk among older patients in the hospital. The investigators select Hong Kong as the region for the experiment. Specifically, the community clinics and daytime hospitals are the actual onsite locations for experimenting. The specific venues of these locations need an electrical power supply and a flat ground for conducting the device test. Patients will be recruited for the development and testing of a device for fall risk assessment, study participants will be involved in balancing assessments, and questionnaire surveys, their medical records will be accessed. And during these tests and questionnaire surveys, the investigators will take photos, videos, and or audio recordings.

Study Type

INTERVENTIONAL

Allocation

Purpose

DEVICE_FEASIBILITY

Masking

NONE

Enrollment

Conditions

Falls Balance Assessment

Interventions

Participants will engage in the device test, clinical assessment tests. The whole test will last twelve months, and the outcome will be assessed pre- and post-implementation for comparison and validation. The intervention results are used to compared with traditional tests and clinical diagnosis, to identify whether the sensor provides a higher accuracy in predicting fall risk, and to explore the feasibility of the sensor in clinical scenarios.

Eligibility

Sex: ALLMin age: 60 YearsMax age: 100 YearsHealthy volunteers:

Medical Language ↔ Plain English

Inclusion Criteria: 1. Older adults aged 60 years and above; 2. Understand Cantonese or Mandarin or English; 3. Clinical patients in the clinics. Exclusion Criteria: 1. Unable to give written informed consent (e.g., illiterate or with cognitive impairment); 2. Inability to stand for 30 seconds without any assistance.

Outcomes

Primary Outcomes

Precision assessment of falling risk prediction

A primary outcome is the precision assessment of falling risk prediction both from device and clinical diagnose. The specific measurement variables for this primary outcome are the classification results of high/low falling risk based on the results (a composite result) of the device test and participants' actual falling incident indicators, including the number of falls, the severity of falling incidents after the device test, and medical history of the participants (eg. the history of the emergency, surgery, and diagnosed disease in the past three years), as well as the diagnosis results of the fall risk by clinical professionals. These results can be shown through the sensitivity and specificity analysis of the device evaluation.

Time frame: six months

Secondary Outcomes

Feasibility of fall risk assessment by using balance sensor in clinical settings

The secondary outcome is the specific fall risk results given by the device and the participant's body data measurement, demographic information, and survey data about user experience and adoption. Additionally, the ideas from clinical professionals on the better application of the device in hospitals will also be regarded as the secondary outcome of this study.