This article from The New York Times educates us on the use of wearable and wireless sensors embedded in carpets to measure a person’s walking speed, stride length, step width and body sway - which are all variables in assessing the risk of falling.

For an older person, a fall is often a byproduct of some other health problem: cardiovascular weakness, changes in medication, the beginnings of dementia, gradual muscle degeneration. Motion analysis aided by inexpensive sensors and computing, researchers say, may well become a new “vital sign,” like a blood pressure reading, that can yield all sorts of clues about health.

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