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...)
Tag: Rehab
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...)
Brain-Computer Interfaces Work Best When Users and Computers Learn from Each Other
Brain-computer interfaces (BCI), which are able to read brain activity and turn the data into real actions such as moving a wheelchair, have the potential to liberate many severely disabled people. While a lot of progress has been achieved in this field, BCIs are still extremely limited in what they’re able to achieve and how […]
Device Helps Disabled Docs Perform Physical Exams
Doctors with disabilities managed to overcome a great deal of challenges to be able to perform their professional duties. The challenges keep on coming, though, because tools that physicians use were almost never designed with disabilities in mind. A couple of folks at the University of Michigan wanted to help out a physician-in-training, that happ (Read more...)
Wearable MRI Detector Allows Imaging of Moving Joints
Researchers at NYU Langone Health have developed a wearable detector glove that allows them to image a moving hand in an MRI scanner. The glove allows for high-quality images of moving joints, whereby tendons and ligaments can be seen moving in relation to bones and muscle, and could be useful in helping to guide surgery. […]
Exclusive: BeCare Link’s Innovative App for Multiple Sclerosis Patients
BeCare Link has created a mobile application (“BeCare MS Link” in the Google Play app store) that connects patients to physicians and researchers to provide unprecedented levels of insight into multiple sclerosis (MS) and other neurodegenerative diseases. As paraphrased from a MS patient: “Much of MS is what is happening in (Read more...)
Students Develop Cheap and Portable Cough Assist Device
People with cystic fibrosis, muscular dystrophy, and other chronic conditions can have serious difficulty coughing. This creates not only discomfort, but potentially dangerous complications for the lungs and heart. There are cough assist devices on the market that help, but they tent to be pricey, heavy, and require electric power. Now students at (Read more...)
Researchers Show How to Improve Cognitive and Physical Ergonomics of Exoskeletons
Modern exoskeletons, while advanced in their mechanics and electronics, are often very difficult for users to get both physically and cognitively used to. Patients end up thinking more about the exoskeletons that are supposed to help them walk than the walking itself. Researchers at Draper, a non-profit R&D organization, tested how different fa (Read more...)
App Controlled Exoskeleton Gives Boy New Arm Strength
A boy with Duchenne muscular dystrophy has been outfitted with a novel app-controlled arm exoskeleton, which allows him to easily control where his arms are positioned. The mechanical device, called X-Ar, was made by Talem Technologies. It’s based on the steadicams used to stabilize film cameras. To make the exoskeleton more usable, students (Read more...)
SmokeBeat Uses Fitness Bands and Smartwatches to Detect Smoking: Interview with CEO of Somatix
The tobacco epidemic is one of the biggest public health issues in history. There are more than one billion smokers worldwide and smoking kills more than seven million people annually. Although many smokers recognize how deadly their habit can be and express the desire to stop smoking, quitting remains very difficult. To help smokers kick [… (Read more...)