Council and technology company work together to create digital falls risk assessment app to keep elderly people safe

Designed for use in care homes, technology company Red Ninja worked in conjunction with Wirral Borough Council to create a pioneering digital falls risk assessment tool called Safe Steps.

The app aims to keep the ageing population safe and enables carers to track vital falls assessment information, such as where and when assessments are due to take place as well as identify any care home residents who haven’t had a falls risk assessment.

Safe Steps was developed in response to Wirral’s older population having a high number of falls.

According to statistics from Age UK and Age Concern, it is thought that as many as six people over the age of 65 have a fall every minute in the UK. It is also predicted that unaddressed fall hazards in the home cost the NHS in England £435 million.

With the ageing population, it means that the number of falls and fall-related injuries are rising, which, in turn, leads to negative consequences that can impact on long-term physical and mental health.

To create Safe Steps, Red Ninja worked with Wirral Independent Services to develop a resource that would standardise assessments and responses connected to fall-related injuries.

After speaking to different professionals, Red Ninja discovered that many are frustrated by a lack of uniformity in procedure to fall prevention.

In response to this, Red Ninja decided to create a tool that would enable carers to have easy access to a digital record to view information on residents swiftly and efficiently. Furthermore, carers would be able to view every falls assessment screening that had taken place on residents, facilitating the opportunity to look over essential information.

Safe Steps can also track where and when assessments were due to take place as well as identify the residents who haven’t received their routine assessment, removing the need for carers to rely on paperwork.

Additionally, the clever tool can generate individual reports on each resident, allowing carers to access individual repositories of information showing which risk strategies work best for each resident.

Since the app’s pilot in over 100 care homes in the Wirral area, it has seen a reduction in falls by 28 percent in nine months, compared to figures from the previous year.

To find out more about the falls risk assessment tool, watch the video below: