One of the most hoped-for features for prosthetic devices is being able to have a sense of touch. All the fine mechanics, motorized power, and dexterity that can be achieved in a robotic hand can’t be taken proper advantage of without feeling what it is you’re touching. Johns Hopkins researchers are working to make this […]
Tag: Rehab
ResQ is Using Games to Fight Opioid Addiction: Interview with Dr. Paul Glimcher
Earlier this year at the Health 2.0 WinterTech Conference, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) and Catalyst @ Health 2.0 launched the RWJF Opioid Challenge, an initiative aimed at bringing together healthcare and technology innovators to solve a growing epidemic of addiction in the United States. A panel of 19 judges evaluated 97 initial (Read more...)
WiFi Radio Signals Let MIT Researchers Track Movements of People
Patients that wander away from their beds are a constant headache for nurses, while those that stay bedridden for too long can create problems of their own. New technology from MIT may soon allow hospital staff to see in real time the location of all the people in the facility. Because the new tech uses […]
Personalized Physical Therapy at Home Using Real Specialists and 3D Camera
Artificial hip and knee replacements require quite a bit of physical therapy post surgery to achieve the desired results. In many places and for many people, a rehab clinic may be too far away or time too short to receive regular therapy. At home exercises, even using virtual coaches, are helpful but they probably can’t […]
Braille Displays for People with Poor Vision Now Have Own USB Standard
In the modern world of technology, disabilities can limit access to certain technologies simply because there are no standards in place. One such example are Braille displays that only worked on some systems and it wasn’t trivial to figure out which ones to get for what task. The USB Implementers Forum, which works to […]
Wristband with a Myriad of Sensors to Improve Lives of Dementia Patients
At the Fraunhofer Institute for Reliability and Microintegration in Berlin, Germany researchers are working on a sensor and software package that would help people developing dementia to slow down the disease progression and improve their and their families’ quality of life. The system, that has already been tried on patients, revolves a (Read more...)
Artificial Sensory Nerve Made of Flexible Organic Electronics
Scientists at Stanford and Seoul National University managed to build artificial tactile sensory nerves out of flexible organic electronics. The system is able to detect pressures down to 1 kilopascal and to do so in clusters that mimic the sensitivity of natural skin. Using their device the investigators were able to read Braille as would [&hellip (Read more...)
First Prosthetic to Really Let The User Feel Its Presence
Even the most advanced modern prosthetic devices don’t give the user a proper sense of the orientation of their mechanical appendage. This is in contrast to our native arms and legs that we can move quite accurately without having to look at how they’re doing. A major breakthrough has been announced by researchers at MIT […]
Blind People Can Now Play Car Racing Video Games
Blind people and others with serious visual impairments aren’t known for playing a lot of video games. Yet, a graduate student at Columbia University has developed a system that allows completely blind people to drive racing cars in video games. Called the RAD, or Racing Auditory Display, the system converts different information about what i (Read more...)
Responsive DBS for Parkinson’s Disease Adapts to Patient’s Changing Needs
Deep brain stimulation (DBS) for Parkinson’s disease management has been shown to be quite effective in controlling the symptoms of the disease. Yet, the technology currently available to patients is rudimentary in that the neurostimulation delivered is constant and doesn’t take into account the changing needs of the patient. A sma (Read more...)
Smart, Pressure Sensitive Stool Helps to Improve Posture and Avoid Sitting Too Long
At Germany’s Fraunhofer Institutes for Industrial Engineering and for Silicate Research, a team has developed a smart stool that monitors a person’s sitting posture and the time spent sitting down. The data is used to motivate users to change their body posture or to get up for a much needed walk. The stool communicates with […]
Wearables for a World Without Disease: Interview with imec’s Chris Van Hoof
Medgadget was recently invited to attend the imec Technology Forum conference in Antwerp, Belgium. Imec is a non-profit R&D innovation organization specializing in nanoelectronics and digital technologies. Like many digital hardware companies, imec saw a lot of potential in healthcare technologies and started researching them about 12 years ago (Read more...)
Klue Hand Tracking Tech for Behavior Change to be Tried at Stanford, Crossover Health
Klue, a Silicon Valley company that’s working to better utilize data gathered from wearable body trackers, is now working with Stanford University and Crossover Health, a primary care medical group, to study the effectiveness of Klue’s modules to affect change. The partnership with Stanford involves conducting a scientific study of Klue (Read more...)
Computer Models of Arm and Hand Anatomy to Improve Function of Prosthetic Devices
New users of advanced prosthetic devices have to undergo tedious training routines in order for the computer that controls the given prosthesis to understand the wishes of the user. Sensors are used to measure the electrical activity of the muscles use to signal a prosthetic to move, but these signals change drastically depending on the […]
App Interprets Cries of Infants to Help Deaf People Raise Kids
Being deaf while raising a child can be a serious challenge, in part because it’s impossible to know when your child is crying and to understand what that crying is supposed to imply. Researchers at University of California, Los Angeles have now developed software that listens to a baby’s crying and interprets it based on […]
Xbox Adaptive Controller Makes Gaming More Accessible For All
Since the birth of home video game systems in the 1970’s, the controller has advanced and evolved just as much as the video games themselves. However, game controllers have always largely catered to players with two hands and normal mobility. To allow more users with limited mobility to enjoy gaming, tech giant Microsoft has introduced [&hell (Read more...)
NFL Releases Free Design Software to Spur Development of Safer Helmets
The NFL (National Football League), having been convinced of the danger of head impacts on its players and the sport overall, has begun a number of initiatives to try to deal with concussions and related injuries. As part of their Play Smart. Play Safe. campaign, the league is releasing a software toolkit to make it […]
Virtual Reality Project to Improve Stroke Recovery Outcomes
The Kessler Foundation is partnering with Virtualware Group, a company focusing on virtual reality (VR) technologies, to develop a therapeutic product for addressing spatial neglect in post stroke patients. The so-called VR-SRT System will use gaming virtual reality technology to get patients to participate willingly and meaningfully in their recov (Read more...)
Hannes Italian Prosthetic Hand Offers Exciting New Capabilities at Lower Price
Engineers from the Italian Institute of Technology and Italy’s National Institute for Insurance against Accidents at Work (INAIL) have unveiled a prosthetic hand that they claim “gives the patient approximately 90% functionality of a natural hand.” The Hannes was designed to lower the price of advanced powered prostheses, whi (Read more...)
Robot Learns How to Dress People Through Computer Simulations
Researchers at Georgia Tech have developed a technique that allowed a robot to teach itself to pull a hospital gown onto someone’s arm. By analyzing nearly 11,000 computer simulations of the procedure, the robot learned how to successfully pull the gown over an arm without imparting dangerous forces. The technique could lead to robotic system (Read more...)