Professor Chenshu WU and his team won the US National Academy of Medicine (NAM) Healthy Longevity Catalyst Award (HLCA) 2024 for the project entitled Development of a Practical Elderly Fall Detection Solution via Non-Intrusive, Low-Cost Sensing’.

This is the second time Professor Wu won this award. ‘We are deeply honoured to receive the Healthy Longevity Catalyst Award for the second time. This recognition validates our ongoing commitment to leveraging technology to address critical challenges in healthcare and eldercare. We are excited to continue our work in advancing the field of healthy aging and look forward to the positive impact our solutions will have on the lives of older adults worldwide,’ said Professor Wu.

 
Project description:

With the growing global aging population, the issue of elderly fall detection has become increasingly critical. Statistically, there are approximately 70,000 fatal falls among older adults worldwide every year, and over 37,000,000 falls that require medical attention. Moreover, many elderly individuals live alone, leaving them potentially unable to seek help for extended periods after a fall. This pressing issue acutely calls for innovative solutions for practical elderly fall detection, which, however, has been a long-standing challenge. This project seeks to develop a practical solution for accurate and robust fall detection that is privacy-preserving, non-intrusive, and low-cost, allowing large-scale deployment for ubiquitous settings. We propose to explore and exploit a unique opportunity underpinned by emerging modalities for non-contact human sensing, e.g., Thermal Arrays and ToF sensors. The combination of these modalities offers a compelling balance between sensing resolution and privacy, rendering a promising solution to ubiquitous fall detection that is unexplored. The project will shed light on practical solutions to fall detection, improving healthy longevity for our aging society to age well.

 
More about the award:

The HLCA award is funded by RGC in collaboration with NAM as part of the Healthy Longevity Global Competition, a series of inducement awards and prizes to catalyse breakthrough innovations to improve people’s physical, mental, and social health and well-being as they age: https://healthylongevitychallenge.org/