Chinese Company Yidaibao’s Wearable Airbags for the Elderly

The global rise of the elderly population, projected to become 1.6B by 2050 compared to 2021’s 761M, has made goods and services such as assisted living, pharmaceuticals, and hospice increasingly urgent, with more parties trying to make them more accessible. However, in addition to them being exhausting to maintain, the costs of providing and funding eldercare services are staggering.

Upon the realization that copious provisions of both physical and emotional assistance to senior citizens can lead to healthier and more productive lives, several organizations and companies have resorted to “smaller” scale innovations in the forms of goods and services. This way, they would be able to provide more abundantly in shorter periods of time and at certain times with less cost too.

This includes Yidaibao, a China-based tech startup founded by Songlonghai, who resorted from airbag production in the automotive industry to creating wearable airbag vests to protect the elderly from potentially fatal falls.

Elderly Protection from Injury

Following years of work in automotive, Songlonghai continued to work on his existing expertise in high-quality airbag technology, only this time with a shift in purpose. After witnessing a close friend’s pelvic bone injury caused by a fall, Songlonghai uncovered the fact that over 400 million people above 65 of age in China experience injuries from what may seem to be a mere fall.

While most falls may not result in anything fatal, they may cause major injuries such as bone fractures, infections, and pulmonary embolisms in senior citizens, bringing a potentially long period of suffering into their lives. Injuries such as these can severely impact their quality of life through not only a decline in physical health but also in costs that have to be spent on surgical procedures and medication, often ending up affecting the lives of entire families as well.

As he decided to focus specifically on innovations for elderly protection, Songlonghai immediately gathered a research and development team to further study elements significant in airbag production, though this time in the direction of creating more personal protective equipment. After years, Yidaibao ended up creating a wearable airbag system, vests to be exact, that inflates when the elderly take a fall to reduce forces of impact.

Before a Fall

According to Yidaibao, the vests are equipped with sensors and tech mechanisms that allow them to react within 0.18 seconds of detecting a fall, deploying cushion-like bags before the elderly reach the ground. The vests’ reaction time, significantly faster than the average time needed for one to hit the ground, is made possible by a micro gyroscope installed in the vest that monitors and analyzes one’s change in posture in real-time, coupled with a microprocessor that triggers the airbag.

After years since the vest’s tech was first developed, Yidaibao has gained several patents, including domestic and Australian, and started exporting its product to Japan, Thailand, Australia, etc. The vests, whose airbags provide 360 degrees of protection, cushioning one’s neck, head, chest, back, shoulders, tail bones, and hips, have also made their way to nursing homes in China as well as senior homes in Singapore.

A Singapore-based non-profit charity and healthcare organization named SATA CommHealth has started a pilot program to further test Yidaibao’s innovation to raise awareness of the tech and help make personal, wearable protection a greater option for elderlies. Participants of the program mostly include senior citizens already undergoing rehabilitation.

The vest is priced at about $420 with a $40 gunpowder cartridge used to inflate the bag and create a loud bang for awareness when a fall happens. While seemingly far from inexpensive, the price may be worth avoiding surgical and medical costs needed to treat injuries. The vest has a six to eight-hour battery life that users can charge before their next use and is said to be reusable for up to 10 times. Users can purchase the vests through Taobao and JD online stores.

Based on Yidaibao’s website, the startup is also working on airbag belts and safety caps for seniors, further cementing its vision of letting the world’s elderly no longer be afraid of falling injuries.

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