Scientists at Virginia Tech have deployed wrist-worn voice recorders to capture real-world data to better understand what happens when people lose their balance. The study, which was led by Michael Madigan in the College of Engineering, built on years of his own foundational work and prior research conducted by the University of Michigan Medical School.
“In the past, researchers would ask participants to recall what they were doing when they lost their balance, but memory can be unreliable,” Madigan explains. “With this new method, participants record their experiences immediately after an incident, providing much more accurate and detailed information.”
The study highlights how voice-recorders captured the moment when participants, who averaged around 72 years of age, lost their balance. The study concluded that among older adults, voice recorders are effective at capturing the circumstances and context in which they lost their balance and potentially fell, without relying on recall later.
In this study, 30 participants wore voice recorders on their wrists over the course of three weeks, and in the event of balance loss, turned them on to record answers to these key questions:
• When and where did the balance loss occur?
• What were they doing at the time?
• How did they attempt to regain their balance—did they grab a railing, take steps, or sit down?
• Why do they think they lost their balance?
• Did they fall?
The immediate, self-reported data was then analysed by Madigan and his team. The advantage of this sort of inquiry is that instead of waiting to meet with researchers after losing their balance, participants could reflect on what happened in the moment.
“We’re trying to better understand the circumstances in which people lose their balance,” Madigan clarifies. “This process doesn’t require people to think back weeks or months to an incident, especially when memory can be unreliable.”
The future of real-world data collection
Looking ahead, the team plans to expand the study to larger groups and combine the data with other lab-based measurements. By doing so, they hope to identify individuals who are most at risk of balance loss and develop strategies to proactively address those risks.
“We want to give clinicians the tools to intervene before a fall occurs,” said Madigan. “This method can provide more reliable, detailed information that helps us understand not just how people lose their balance, but why.”
The study appears in the Journal of American Geriatrics Society and it is titled “Wrist-worn voice recorders capture the circumstances and context of losses of balance among community-dwelling older adults.”
