To prevent the fall-related deaths of even more older adults in the country, the government has deemed it necessary to introduce the new Fall Prevention Act, which dictates that from this day on, all older adults must have the app installed on their smartphones; so that unnecessary fatal falling incidents will be a thing of the past.
This big step has been long-awaited by everyone at Gociety, so you can imagine the feelings of disappointment that spread through our company when this news turned out to be a mere dream – triggered by the sad news concerning older adults Jan (90) and Annie (86), who died in each others arms in their garden last night, due to a fall that could have been easily prevented, and were found by their daughter this morning.
3267 people aged 65 years or older died in 2015, in the Netherlands alone. Only five years ago, this number was a mere 2117. And the increase cannot be explained by the ageing of society alone, expert VeiligheidNL reports. One of the main reasons for the increase is the fact that people tend to live at home longer than they used to – where they are usually not sufficiently protected against the risk of falling.
At Gociety Solutions, we have spent the last few years researching this problem, and we have come to an important conclusion: developing mechanisms that quickly provide users with help in the case of a fall (the usual solution) is good, but simply not enough. Instead, we have focused our energy on developing solutions that prevent falling incidents. In order words: catching people before they fall.
Want to know how we do this? Visit Catch you before you fall.
