Pressure-Sensing "Smart Sock" Wearables Eliminate Falls in At-Risk Patients During a 13-Month Study

A team of investigators has shown the value in "smart socks," wearables designed for fall-risk patients — providing advanced warning of stand events with a 99.8 percent accuracy rate and a reduction in falls to zero during a 13-month study period.

“Due to the rapidly aging population, the number of patients at higher risk of falling in hospitals is expected to increase substantially," explains study co-author Tina Bodine of the problem the team was trying to solve. "About 30 percent of in-hospital falls are thought to be preventable, so it’s imperative to determine better ways to keep our patients safe from falling while hospitalized."

That "better way": the Patient is Up (PUP) smart sock wearables from Palarum, which use integrated pressure sensors to detect when a fall-risk patient is attempting to stand — and providing advanced warning, through a smart bridge system linked to a central monitoring device and wearable "Smart Badges" carried by staff, which saw nurses attending study participants with a median response time of just 24 seconds.

“A major problem with bed and chair pressure sensors is that the high numbers of false alarms may cause 'alarm fatigue' that can contribute to delayed response," Bodine claims of the benefits to a wearable solution. "With this system, no falls were detected, and only 0.2 percent of the alarms were false alarms. We also analyzed nurse response times that ranged from 1 second to nearly 10 minutes and found that the median nurse response time was 24 seconds."

The study had originally intended to enrol 2,500 patients, but the global pandemic saw it scaled down to 569 patients over a 13-month period. "“Patients can fall while they are hospitalized, and this can sometimes lead to injury or death. We know that existing fall prevention measures do not work consistently," claims senior investigator Tammy Moore of the work. "During our study, we observed zero falls, which was a lower fall rate among the patients wearing these socks than the historical fall rate of four falls per 1,000 patient-days."

"Our staff believed that response times were improved compared with the use of bed and chair alarms, among others, because alarm notifications included room numbers, targeted the three closest clinical staff members, and notified nurses directly instead of indirectly through a nurse station," Moore adds.

The full study has been published in the Journal of Nursing Care Quality under closed-access terms; additional information on the PUP smart socks can be found on the Palarum website.