Fall detection with nothing to wear, charge or remember, connected the moment it’s plugged in.
The problem: the safety net depends on the person it protects
More than one in four adults 65 and older fall each year, and fewer than half tell their doctor. Those falls lead to about 4.5 million emergency department visits a year, and one fall doubles the chance of another.
The usual answer is a pendant, a wrist alarm, or a call button. Each one only protects someone who wears it, keeps it charged and can reach it, and for many older adults, that’s a new daily habit with no lifetime of muscle memory behind it. Far too often, when a fall happens, it’s on the nightstand, off for the night or across the room. The moment it matters most is often the moment it’s furthest away.
Then there’s the connection. Many connected health products quietly assume a level of technical proficiency that not every household has. Setup and everyday checks often live in a mobile app, and when something goes wrong, the troubleshooting routine can be complex. For an older adult who doesn’t live in apps, the instinct isn’t to check. It’s to assume all is well. A cellular connection takes most of that guesswork away: no router to fix, no connection to monitor. The question is no longer “Is it connected?” Just “Is it on?”
“For an older adult living alone, the confidence to stay in the home they love comes from feeling safe there. For their family, it’s the peace of mind of knowing that if something happens, someone will know. That’s what Cherish is built for. It fits into an older adult’s life, not the other way around — quietly looking out for them, with their privacy and dignity intact.”
— Bradley Chapman, T-Mobile Accelerator
The solution: contactless radar that asks nothing of the person it protects
Cherish Health takes the wearable out of the equation entirely. The Cherish Home Hub looks like a smart speaker and plugs in on a shelf or dresser, or mounts on a wall. Inside is a radar sensor that watches over as many as three rooms, sensing through walls and tracking more than one person at a time. It knows the difference between a fall and someone lying down, and it catches slow slides and falls from bed, not just the hard ones.
And it’s built around dignity. There’s no camera in the room: the radar senses movement, not images, and the analysis happens on the device itself. Over time, it learns the rhythm of a person’s day and can flag changes worth a family’s attention. When it recognizes a fall, nobody has to press a button. The alert goes straight to family and a 24/7 response center. In fact, that design earned Cherish a 2024 Fast Company Innovation by Design award.
“Cherish turns technology into a source of vitality that fosters meaningful connection, combats isolation, and empowers people not just to live safely, but to live fully, with purpose and heart.”
— Sumit Nagpal, Chair, CEO and Founder, Cherish Health
The impact: a connection as dependable as the sensor
Through the T-Mobile Accelerator, Cherish built its device on T-Mobile connectivity, so it comes online the moment it’s plugged in, with no router, no password and no setup, and an alert never depends on the home’s Wi-Fi. T-Mobile’s teams worked alongside Cherish’s engineers to validate the device’s cellular connection on T-Mobile’s network, sized to what the device actually needs.
Because detection runs on the device, the network has one job, narrow and critical: carry the alert, every time. That makes T-Mobile’s network part of the safety net itself.
For families, providers and the programs that serve older adults, a device that doesn’t need home internet puts fall detection within reach of homes that have never had dependable broadband and takes the setup off the people least able to do it. That’s the larger opportunity: care that comes to the home, rather than asking the home to be ready for it.
“Connectivity should be built in at the design stage. Through the T-Mobile Accelerator program, we make that possible. Healthcare providers want to keep their patient's safe and connected outside the hospital walls, and a company like Cherish, using the T-Mobile network, enables this at scale.”
— Tarun Sheshraj, Managing Director, Strategic Accounts — FinTech & Healthcare, T-Mobile