Early diagnosis of frailty: Technological and non-intrusive devices for clinical detection

•Frailty is multi-system impairment associated with increased vulnerability to stressors.•There are classical frailty diagnosis tools as magnetic resonance imaging or tomography.•It is interesting to change paradigm exposed above; it is possible to detect frailty without expensive facilities.•These new devices can provide information for diagnosis in an ecological way for both patients and medical staff and even with continuous monitoring. This work analyses different concepts for frailty diagnosis based on affordable standard technology such as smartphones or wearable devices. The goal is to provide ideas that go beyond classical diagnostic tools such as magnetic resonance imaging or tomography, thus changing the paradigm; enabling the detection of frailty without expensive facilities, in an ecological way for both patients and medical staff and even with continuous monitoring. Fried's five-point phenotype model of frailty along with a model based on trials and several classical physical tests were used for device classification. This work provides a starting point for future researchers who will have to try to bridge the gap separating elderly people from technology and medical tests in order to provide feasible, accurate and affordable tools for frailty monitoring for a wide range of users.