Kinesis Health Technologies, a Dublin-based health technology start-up and Solutions4Health, a UK-based and global provider of preventative health solutions, have announced a partnership to market new falls prevention services and technologies in the UK. Solutions4Health will market Kinesis’ breakthrough technology Kinesis QTUG™, which has been shown to be much more accurate than traditional methods in assessing risk of falls in older adults. Solutions4Health will provide falls prevention solutions and service implementation improvements, taking advantage of Kinesis QTUG™, to facilitate large-scale adoption of the technology across the NHS. Falls in older adults are a major problem across the UK, with one in three people over 65 (one in two people aged over 80) falling at least once a year. The number of over 65s in England alone is forecast to rise from nine million to 11 million in 2021, while falls are estimated to cost the NHS more than £2.3 billion per year and take up four million bed days. Falls are also the leading cause of serious accidental injury among people aged 65 and over. One of the most common are hip fractures, with 30 per cent of sufferers dying within a year. Incidence rates in hospitals are even higher, and in long-term care settings approximately 30–50 per cent of residents fall each year. Kinesis Health Technologies was founded in 2013 by Seamus Small and Dr Barry Greene as a spin-out from University College Dublin (UCD) and is headquartered at NexusUCD, the university’s Industry Partnership Centre. Kishore Sankla, CEO, Solutions4Health said: “The increasingly substantial cost of falls places a massive burden on the NHS and has an equally huge personal cost, plus there are also massive downstream effects in terms of carer time and absence from work. By partnering with Kinesis we will be able to provide real benefits and efficiencies for falls prevention - giving physical therapists and other clinicians a superior method of determining an individual’s potential for falling, and providing the necessary support and information in order to intervene and reduce that risk.” Kinesis QTUG™, a Class I medical device, utilises body-worn sensors combined with signal processing and machine learning methods to provide a quantitative assessment of mobility and falls risk, plus statistical comparisons against population averages for age and gender. The technology has been scientifically validated through an extensive programme of top-tier internationally peer-reviewed research in falls prevention over the past eight years, based on more than 1,300 patient assessments.