This man's life will never be the same again. If he stands, sits or falls, somebody will be watching. No, it's not a new reality television show and it's not a spy story.

Phil has recently had a stroke. He can get around okay and doesn't need to be hospitalized. So he's wearing a belt developed as part of a unique system, by Australia's science agency CSIRO. It transmits information by a radio signal to a monitored computer.

We can tell if the patient's walking or standing still, if they're lying down. Most importantly we can tell if the patient has a fall.

Statistics show that when people over 80 have a fall, which requires hospitalization, their life expectancy is shortened to one year. It's a year that's traumatic for them, their carers, and expensive for the hospital system.

One of the advantages of being able to continuously monitor a patient's vital signs using our wireless system is that if something does go wrong then help can be summoned immediately.

Eventually, with the use of small patches on the patients body, other vital signs will be also be able to be measured remotely.

Being able to maintain almost completely independent living using our system, I think is far preferable to institutional care. The other thing is that we will make sure that any patient using our system knows where the off switch is and can stop the monitoring when every they want to and being monitored will be something that is completely voluntarily for these patients.

Laurie Wilson
CSIRO Telecommunications and Industrial Physics
PO Box 76
Epping NSW 1710
Laurie.Wilson@csiro.au