Senior Wellness

Our Unique Offering
Stepscan mobility assessment technology helps hospitals and long-term care homes reduce costs and liability exposure due to accidental falls within their facility. The Stepscan mobility assessment tool is capable of measuring and tracking irregularities in gait and balance, easily and quickly identifying residents who are at high risk of falling.
Stepscan also presents a fall-risk screening and monitoring tool that demonstrates duty of care in ensuring patient and resident safety and wellbeing. Reduction in falls reduces operating costs and liability exposure, quickly providing a return on investment to justify the equipment purchase and ongoing software maintenance fees.
About Stepscan
Stepscan Technologies was kick-started in 2012 with the award of a $1.4 M Atlantic Innovation Award to build a pressure sensitive flooring system and software that tracks and analyzes how people walk. Today, Stepscan is a state-of-the-art computerized mobility assessment technology. Through the use of an innovative electronic, modular floor tile system with proprietary software, Stepscan’s technology tracks patterns in gait and balance as subjects move across the floor.
Our technology has multiple applications and is being used in several verticals including medical research and clinical rehabilitation, physiotherapy, sports performance assessments, military training and virtual simulation, and now security applications. Stepscan’s gait and balance technology is used internationally, by rehabilitation specialists in hospitals and medical researchers in universities, to provide objective measures of patients’ walking ability and balance function. Stepscan is trusted by some of the world’s most prestigious institutions including the Royal Children’s Hospital (Melbourne Australia), the United States Department of Veterans Affairs, Veterans Affairs Canada, University of California, University of Massachusetts - Amherst, and University of New Brunswick.
In 2018, we were approached by the Nursing Director of a Senior Care Facility who was interested in addressing falls in their facility. They wanted to develop a fall risk screening and monitoring tool that could be used to modernize what they felt was an outdated fall risk management program. They wanted something that not only helped them identify high risk fallers, but something that could also support a restorative care program.
Balance and gait deficits are significant contributing factors to a seniors' risk of suffering a fall. Based on research collected on over 3,600 subjects, Stepscan’s mobility assessment tool identifies irregularities in gait and balance and subsequently identifies high risk fallers quickly and reliably. Stepscan® also reveals areas of weakness; information which can be used to guide the development of treatment plans that safely encourage mobility and which foster independence and improved quality of life.
Stepscan Users say they love our system because it is versatile, patient friendly, fast (assessments take less than 10 minutes), easy to use, and our reports are easy to navigate and interpret. Furthermore, objective measures and our proprietary change-over-time global scoring makes it easy to track individuals’ progress over time.
Features:
- Quick, unobtrusive assessments
- Accurate, long-term patient records
- Objective measures of fall risk
Benefits:
- Data-informed care plans
- Increased safety and quality of care
- Evidence of Duty of Care
Industry Challenges and How We Solve Them
Falls are the leading cause of both fatal and non-fatal injures for older Americans and healthcare organizations absorb millions of dollars of fall-related expenses as operating costs every year.
The average annual cost of accidental falls in hospitals is $1.2 M, or over $13 thousand per patient, per fall. In nursing homes, accidental falls cost an average of $620 thousand per year, or over $6 thousand per resident fall. In the United States hospitals are not reimbursed for health care costs associated with falls that occur during hospitalization. Nursing homes absorb the cost in their operating budget.
The World Health Organization, the National Institute of Health, and the Ontario Ministry of Health all endorse gait assessments and training as they attribute a reduction of falls of 17% in facilities with gait assessment and training programs.
Still, subjective fall-risk and frailty assessments are the status quo. Our current healthcare environment demands better.
Stepscan helps hospitals and nursing homes reduce costs and liability exposure due to accidental falls within their facility by identifying those at high-risk and providing the opportunity to intervene before a fall occurs.

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How Stepscan Modernizes Senior Wellness
Fall Risk Assessment
Stepscan’s ability to unobtrusively measure walking pattern and balance makes it an excellent objective fall-risk assessment tool.
Evidence-based research shows that a gait’s speed, rhythm, and symmetry, as well as postural sway and peak underfoot pressures can all indicate fall risk. The Stepscan Fall Risk module objectively measures key gait and balance performance indicators and calculates an aggregate Stability Score, which indicates the overall fall risk of senior patients (60 years of age or older).

The Stepscan Mobility Score can be used to rate an individual before and after certain interventions or to serve as a regular measurement used to identify those at high risk of falling. Stepscan’s detailed baseline reports can also give facilities confidence to make objective decisions regarding appropriate interventions and care plans.
Stepscan helps senior care facilities modernize their fall risk strategy, enhancing the quality of their operations as it relates to patient safety and increasing their quality of patient care. Screening and monitoring using the Stepscan System can be used in conjunction with established fall risk intervention strategies, can demonstrate duty of care in ensuring patient safety and well-being, and can contribute to a reduction in the number of falls within a facility.
The Stepscan Mobility module is available as an additional, automated report to both new and existing Stepscan customers and can be used to enhance the care provided by senior wellness facilities.
Diabetic Foot Screening
Diabetic foot ulceration is a common, preventable complication of diabetes in aging adults. For most people the first sign of foot problems is pain. However, peripheral neuropathy, another common consequence of diabetes, may cause a loss of the protective sensation on the plantar surface of the foot. Therefore, foot ulcers are not always obvious, and a patient may not show symptoms until the ulcer becomes infected.
Peak plantar pressures have been studied extensively as a contributing factor to skin breakdown leading to diabetic foot ulcers. Instruments such as the Stepscan system can be helpful in detecting possible sites of plantar ulcerations by locating the areas of maximum pressure.
The Stepscan computerized assessment of foot pressures provides both a visual and quantitative measure of:
- Pressure distribution under support areas of the foot
- Overloaded areas (areas of high pressure that could be of concern)
- Feet asymmetry (and how the body is compensating)
- Weight distribution on each leg
- Areas at risk of injury or ulceration in diabetics


The Stepscan Dynamic Pressure module is available as an additional, automated report to both new and existing Stepscan customers and can be a used to enhance the quality of proactive resident care at senior wellness facilities.
The Stepscan System
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