Executive Summary

Roughly one in three adults over 65 experience a fall each year, and the largest share of adverse outcomes occurs among older adults living independently who lack immediate help; family caregivers, home health agencies, and insurers all face the costs and liability of delayed detection and response. Current solutions—pendant alarms, specialized wearables, monitored home sensors—are effective for subsets of users but suffer from low adoption, stigma, and gaps when users forget to wear devices or leave the home. You could build a passive smartphone monitoring system that runs continuous, on-device inference using accelerometer, gyroscope and barometric sensors to detect falls and prolonged immobility, escalate alerts to designated caregivers or emergency services, and provide a simple consented “check-in” UX to reduce false positives. The product would prioritize local processing to avoid streaming audio/video, minimize battery draw through duty-cycling, and offer an opt-in API for insurers, carriers, or OEMs to bundle the feature rather than requiring additional hardware. This market is attractive now because the global 65+ population is expanding, smartphone ownership among older cohorts has materially increased, and edge ML tooling makes privacy-preserving monitoring feasible; the addressable market can be approximated at $30.0B (700M seniors × $43/yr in safety/monitoring software). Revenue potential is meaningful (80/100) and unit economics compare favorably to hardware-based programs, but capturing share will require convincing payors and families of reliability and ROI. To stand out you’ll need superior accuracy for real-world senior movement patterns, clinically validated detection algorithms, low-power engineering, and trusted distribution partners (insurers, carriers, OEMs) rather than only DTC marketing; focus on lowering false alarms and creating clear escalation workflows to reduce caregiver fatigue. Challenges are real: regulatory and liability considerations, the need for prospective studies, and heterogeneous phone hardware across markets, but if those are addressed the approach can scale faster and cheaper than bespoke devices.

Market Opportunity

Detecting senior falls & emergencies via passive smartphone monitoring targets a $30.0B = 700M seniors globally x $43/yr (safety & monitoring software/features per person) total addressable market with medium saturation and a year-over-year growth rate of 12% (remote monitoring & digital health combined).

Key trends driving demand: Aging population -- rising absolute number of older adults living independently increases demand for remote safety tools.; Smartphone proliferation -- even older cohorts increasingly own phones with capable sensors, reducing hardware barriers.; On-device AI -- edge ML allows privacy-preserving continuous monitoring without streaming video or auditory data.; Shift to home care -- payors and families prefer aging-in-place solutions, pushing adoption of remote monitoring..

Key competitors include Philips Lifeline, GreatCall / Lively (Best Buy Health), Apple Watch (Fall Detection), CarePredict, Bay Alarm Medical / LifeFone (PERS providers).

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Detecting senior falls & emergencies via passive smartphone monitoring

Executive Summary

Market Validation

Market Opportunity

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