Fall detection watch/Futureproofing

[HerculesMulligannn]

I’m new to this topic, so apologies if this has been done a million times before. (I did have a quick look).

My DM is 85, living at home alone. She’s in pretty good shape physically and mentally, no cognitive issues. She is reasonably mobile and has a garden that she loves and spends a lot of time in. She has a call button type thing (Carelink) which she was told to have when she was having treatment for cancer about 15 years ago (all good on that front now). It’s pendant style and by her bed. She has fallen over twice in the garden and once in the road just outside the house in the last 3 years and on each occasion needed to summon help, so a call button by her bed wasn’t really the answer 🙄. (I’m disregarding the time 5 years ago when she and her cousin ignored some “no access” tape to cross a car park under construction as a short cut, because when she fell over that time she had her cousin/partner in crime with her so technically didn’t need a fall alert watch 😬)

We’ve had a good ongoing conversation, which I’ve called “futureproofing”, about her accepting help/assistance/tech that enables her to keep her living at home as long as possible. So she has accepted that a fall detection alert style watch would be a good thing, because she wears a watch at all times anyway. Her stipulation is that it should be something that looks like a watch, not like a call button round her wrist or “something that an old person would wear”. We talked about an Apple Watch, but it feels a bit faffy and over engineered for what we need.

So my question is, does anyone have any recommendations of anything tried and tested that is a watch-presenting fall detection/alerting device?

(Happy to share my other “futureproofing” wins, if anyone is interested)

Apple Watch. I have a heart condition which occasionally causes me to hit the floor like a sack of potatoes. My watch is set up to automatically alert designated family members and call emergency services to my location

If you want her to be safe, it’s your best and realistically only option, you could get one of those jewellery straps so it looks more like an elegant bracelet than a watch

My mother has an Apple Watch. She fell down the stairs in the early hours of the morning and the emergency services were alerted.

The new Samsung watches can detect falls. I have a Fit3 which does this, it was £40. You can set it to contact 999 and/or emergency contacts.

My mum's a bit of a technophobe so wears an Age UK fall alarm. Hers is a pendant, but it also comes as a wrist band that looks like a watch:

https://personalalarms.ageco.co.uk/pages/digital-fall-alarm-save-40-ppc

My DM uses a CPR Guardian watch. I can check her heart rate, temperature, location and see if she’s been up and about without disturbing her. I can call her on it so she’s not racing to get to the phone. It’s got an SOS button she can press at any time as well as it alerting me to falls and it doesn’t rely on her having a WiFi connection. I’ve set the ring tone on my phone to an alarm sound which rings out even when my phone is on silent.