Grant: Catalyst Grant: Digital Health

Falls are a major health problem for older adults in Canada. About 1 in 4 older adults falls each year, and falls can lead to injury, loss of independence, reduced quality of life, and high healthcare costs. One of the most effective ways to prevent falls is reactive balance training, a type of exercise that helps people practice how to recover from sudden loss of balance, such as after a trip. Studies show that this kind of training can reduce falls by about 40 to 50%. However, its use in routine care is limited because there is no simple, affordable, and practical way for hospitals and clinics to deliver safe, controlled trips. This project will develop and test a new digital health system to address that gap. The system will combine a portable cable-trip device with virtual reality to safely create realistic trip situations during walking. Virtual reality will allow training in everyday situations, such as walking in a cluttered room, narrow hallway, or other challenging environments. Our goal is to create a system that is affordable, easy to use in hospitals, and designed with future scale-up in mind. The project has three parts. First, we will work with older adults, people at risk of falls, patient partners, and clinicians to identify the most important real-life fall situations to target. Second, we will build the virtual reality-enabled cable-trip system and test its safety and technical performance. Third, we will pilot the system at Providence Care Hospital to see whether it fits into clinical workflows and is safe, usable, and acceptable to end users. This project is important because it aims to make one of the most effective fall-prevention approaches more accessible in routine care. In the long term, it could help reduce falls, improve mobility and confidence, support independence, and lower healthcare costs for older adults and other people at risk of falls.