Safe Steps: Revolutionising Hospital Fall Prevention

A hospital patient who is unsteady on their feet will soon be tracked by a smartphone app that automatically alerts nurses when they try to get up alone. Falls in hospitals are a persistent safety problem. They cause serious injuries, prolong stays, and cost the NHS millions each year. Current prevention methods rely on staff observation and manual risk checks, which are time-consuming and easy to miss. The Safe Steps project adapts an existing app that already reduced falls in care homes, tailoring it for the faster-paced, higher-risk hospital environment. The app will monitor patient movement, update individual risk assessments in real time, and send automated alerts to ward staff. If the tool works at scale, hospitals could prevent a significant share of falls without adding to staff workload. That would mean fewer broken hips, shorter hospital stays, and lower costs for the NHS. The project also aims to generate practical knowledge about how digital tools can be integrated into hospital workflows—knowledge that could inform future safety technologies across the health service.