How does biosensing reach into the lives of older people living at home? Here we examine care monitoring systems for older people, or telecare, as this has become known. We focus in particular on the wearable falls detector, an alarm device which triggers, it is claimed, when a person trips or falls. We explore findings from ethnographies of home telecare and from citizens’ panel debates on how individuals and families live with such systems, and how falls detectors are constructed as workable. Following individuals' interactions with telecare we question the notion of self-tracking, preferring the term dys-tracking as better reflecting their relationship with automated devices. Falls detectors are technically highly complex, collecting data difficult to interpret. Ageing bodies are invariably assessed as low functioning and intrinsically at risk. Views from our citizens’ panels however, show a more active and imaginative constituency where practices of self-care exist alongside remote-care systems.
Investigating the psychometric properties of the Carers’ Fall Concern instrument to measure carers’ concern for older people at risk of falling at home: A cross‐sectional study