Airbag in a Belt - Automatically Deploys Over the Hip when a Fall is Detected

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The 411: Inflatable Airbag in a Belt
Found on: https://activeprotective.com/

Revolutionary New Smart Belt:


We’ve developed a belt that automatically deploys airbags over the hip when a fall is detected.



Fall Detection:


“Motion in context” provides for highly accurate fall-in-progress detection, increasing confidence, compliance and adoption.

Hip Protection:

Fall-in-progress technology deploys airbag protection around the hip, immediately prior to impact, in order to reduce hip impact, automatically and within a fraction of a second. We don’t just detect, we protect.

Rehab and Continuing Care:

Provides unprecedented protection to patients and residents with high fall risk in rehab, continuing care and senior living communities.

ActiveProtective was founded on the simple belief that hip fractures among older adults, and their devastating consequences, could be prevented through the use of wearable technology.

Dr. Robert F. Buckman spent much of his career as Professor of Trauma at Temple University, and running one of the busiest trauma centers in Pennsylvania.  He is a lifelong medical innovator with 15 patents to his name, and is the author of over 100 publications in the field of trauma.  Upon becoming Director of Trauma at St. Mary’s hospital in Langhorne, PA, he became acutely aware of the shift in age demographic of his patient population, the types of injuries sustained, and quickly identified the most devastating ones.  It was there that he recognized an enormous, solvable healthcare crisis facing Emergency Centers throughout the world – it is the frail, independent elderly falling down and breaking their hips, and the subsequent fight of their lives to recover from that fall injury.  Most do not recover.

We first set out on a mission to determine fall-risk factors, in order to identify those patients at a 15% or greater statistical probability of breaking their hip.  We then developed a methodology using 3D motion sensors to determine the stereotypical motions and accelerations that govern our normal, daily activities, in order to determine ‘departures’ from what is allowable.  This simple-to-understand technique, called “fall disambiguation”, allows us to determine falls with unprecedented accuracy.  It allows us to determine falls prior to impact, giving us the ability to intervene by deploying micro-airbag protection.  We’ve demonstrated the ability to reduce impact force by 90% with our garments, which will provide an unprecedented level of hip protection.

We will use “fall disambiguation” in our smart garments to transform how we protect our elderly at Long-Term–Care facilities, during post-operative rehabilitation at home, as well as any patient with a greater than 15% probability of breaking their hip who would like to continue to age-in-place.  Our methodology also revolutionizes fall detection accuracy of traditional PERS medical alert monitors.  At ActiveProtective, we will change the way we care for our independent elderly, and make hip fractures a preventable condition.