The smart-home study: A feasibility study to pilot the use of smartphone technology to identify environmental falls risk factors in the home.
Ka Ho Marco Leung, Susan Brandis
PMID 37332299WHAT IT FOUND
Healthy adults could follow photo guidelines, but only 10 of 49 submitted images were usable.
Therapists agreed on risks in the few good photos, but found they could not assess key hazards like furniture stability or spatial width remotely.
Key findings
01Only 10 of the 49 photos received were of sufficient quality to be assessed by occupational therapists.
02Occupational therapists reported good inter-rater reliability when assessing the usable photos for fall risks.
03Therapists could not assess critical environmental factors such as furniture stability, spatial area, and mobility aid use from the images.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTs
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What it does not show
The study used healthy, tech-savvy volunteers rather than the target population of older adults at risk of falls, so results may not apply to people with vision or motor impairments. The sample was small (n=20) and recruited via convenience and snowball sampling, introducing bias. The majority of photos were unusable, meaning the reliability data reflects only a small fraction of the attempted assessments. No baseline medical or functional data was collected, so the impact of disability on photo-taking ability is unknown.
Declared interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest and received no financial support for the research.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume that because therapists agreed on the risks in the few usable photos, the method is valid for screening. The high rate of unusable images (39 of 49) and the inability to assess furniture stability or spatial width mean this approach currently misses critical fall hazards.