No Need to Fall Pathfinder
Project impact
Empower older adults and carers to live more independently, with greater confidence, wellbeing, and involvement in shared decision-making.
Improve communication, coordination, and person-centred support across health, social care, and alarm response services, enabling earlier intervention for people at risk of falls.
Demonstrate a scalable, digitally enabled prevention model with the potential to reduce avoidable escalation to urgent and acute care across Lanarkshire and Scotland.
One in three people over 65 will experience a fall each year, yet many never access support that could help prevent it. No Need to Fall, part of the Tech for Better Care programme, is developing a digital service that provides personalised advice and connects people with local support. The aim is to help people stay independent, safe and active at home for longer, while improving outcomes for families, carers and health and care services.
No Need to Fall is a digitally enabled falls prevention programme funded by the Tech for Better Care programme, designed to help people stay independent, safe and well at home for longer. Developed through co-design with citizens, carers and professionals over 3 stages, the programme recognised that people at the highest risk of falls are often the least likely to seek out digital support themselves. As a result, the service has been designed to support not only individuals, but also the families, carers and community networks around them.
The programme has developed and tested a range of digital tools that help identify falls risk earlier and connect people with the right support. Here is how it works
Identify risk early
- People can access a digital falls prevention service through local platforms, where they complete a simple assessment to identify potential falls risks and wider healthy ageing needs.
Receive personalised guidance
- Based on their responses, users receive tailored information, practical advice and signposting to local services and evidence-based falls prevention support, aligned with both World Falls and NICE Guidelines.
Create a personal record
- Through a secure Personal Data Store, individuals can record important information such as falls history, emergency access arrangements, communication preferences and details of people who support them.
Connect information across services
- With appropriate permissions, key information can be shared between local services and alarm monitoring teams, helping people receive more informed and coordinated support when they need it.
Support independence at home
- By bringing together personalised advice, community support and better information sharing, the programme aims to help people stay active, independent and confident at home for longer.
By combining digital technology with personalised support and stronger connections between services, No Need to Fall aims to make falls prevention more accessible, helping people maintain their independence and improve their quality of life.
Summary
This pathfinder supports new methods to increase earlier identification and self-management of falls risk by giving older adults, carers, and services access to personalised risk information, falls history, and tailored prevention support.
This project contributed to stakeholders ability to deliver the following impacts:
- Greater independence, confidence, and wellbeing for older adults and carers
- More person-centred and shared decision-making between individuals, carers, and professionals
- Improved communication and coordination across fragmented health, social care, and alarm response systems
- Earlier, preventative intervention for people at risk of falls across Lanarkshire
- Potential reduction in avoidable escalation to urgent or acute care if embedded at scale
- Scalable model for digitally enabled prevention and self-management across Scotland
Impact & value
Progress to date
Partnerships, Funding, Engagement:
- Share work locally and nationally (including Digital Office and Digital Front Door engagement; publish papers; limited real‑life deployment.
- Research funding applications across different calls as they emerge.
Next steps
Partners
