Friend of mine James Firth posted on Facebook that he had rescued an aged neighbour who had fallen down the stairs in her home. She had been stuck alone for five hours before James heard her cries for help. Terrible experience for her but could have been a lot worse.

My first thoughts were to remind myself to get one of those personal alarms should I ever find myself living alone in my old age.

However the solution is obvious. Wearable devices such as the Samsung Galaxy Gear are going to become suitably advanced so that it can act both as my phone/intergalactic communicator and the alarm in case of emergency. You won’t need to press a button. There will be an app that distinguishes between snoozing in the armchair after lunch and falling down.

The current generation of older demographic, if I can put it like that, is by and large unlikely to own a smartphone or wearable phone. In fact hardly anyone has a wearable one yet, but it will come.

So we have to wait a few years before wearers of dual purpose phone and personal alarms become statistically significant (in the appropriate age range) but significant they will become and a significant dent should be made into casualty numbers for older persons falling down stairs and not being able to attract anyone’s attention.

You heard it first on trefor.net!!!