Upper-limb therapy device receives £800k grant

 The stroke research seems to be here:

Rehab device enables stroke survivors with arm disabilities to do more training

The latest here:

Upper-limb therapy device receives £800k grant

GripAble, the mobile assessment and training platform for home-based rehabilitation, and Dr Firat Güder from the Department of Bioengineering at Imperial College London, have been awarded a grant worth over £800,000 by the Biomedical Catalyst (BMC) to bring SqueezAble to the clinic. 

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The device combines soft-sensing technology and interactive gamification to revolutionise upper-limb therapy for paediatric cerebral palsy patients, to the clinic.

In the UK, there are an estimated 187,000 children living with an arm disability, and 85 million worldwide. Without regular occupational therapy for upper limb and hand strength, dexterity and movement range, a child's condition can deteriorate and impact their ability to live in functional independence in adulthood. Many arm disabilities are linked to neurological disorders, such as Cerebral Palsy, which affects coordination, precision, and timing of movements.

The grant was awarded as part of the BMC Feasibility and Primer Awards 2021 competition run by Innovate UK to support UK registered businesses to develop innovative healthcare products, technologies, and processes.

The project team will work with children with Paediatric Cerebral Palsy to develop SqueezAble, which builds on the company’s track record of commercialising its first portable therapeutic hand-grip devices, the GripAble Pro and the GripAble Home, for people with a range of musculoskeletal and neurological conditions. 

GripAble will partner with Imperial’s Guder Research Group, which developed the underlying patent-pending soft-sensor technology. Together with an award-winning team of OTs, clinical specialists, and medical device engineers, the project is aiming to advance the current prototypes toward clinical translation.

Dr Mike Mace, chief technology officer and co-founder of GripAble, said: “Children living with an arm disability must learn to independently complete bimanual activities of daily living, requiring them to use both hands simultaneously, to be able to complete everyday tasks like eating, writing, and washing. To support them with this, we have a vision of a next-gen sensor which seamlessly integrates with and complements current occupational therapy by incorporating novel soft-sensing technology that will enable training of bimanual hand function by digitising existing soft therapy tools such as stress balls and Theraputty, in combination with gamification and virtual tasks.

“The project will incorporate user-centred design processes to develop and test SqueezAble with our target user group. As well as developing the new SqueezAble technology, over the next two years, we plan to create new bimanual games for training functional movement on GripAble's software platform extending our current unimanual games.”

Dr Firat Güder from Imperial College London said: “This project will allow us to build a medical device and an entirely new concept to address a large gap in current practice, especially valuable for the rehabilitation of paediatric patients. My team and I are extremely excited to work with GripAble and other partners on this project, which will be a great learning opportunity for all those involved.”

Business consultancy Vandenbergh UK is providing project management support for the SqueezAble project.

Its director Hannah Van Den Bergh said: “We are delighted to see GripAble and Imperial College London secure funding for this wonderful project which will be an absolutely critical development for the occupational therapy community.”

Rehab device launched for stroke patients with arm disabilities

GripAble was out there way back in October 2016, HOW FUCKING INCOMPETENT DOES YOUR HOSPITAL HAVE TO BE TO NOT DO ANYTHING WITH ARM/HAND RECOVERY IN 5 YEARS?

Medical Devices / Diagnostics Rehabilitation / Physical Therapy Stroke "Virtual physiotherapist" helps paralysed patients exercise using computer games

The latest here:

 

Rehab device launched for stroke patients with arm disabilities

A rehab device has been launched that enables stroke patients with arm disabilities to do more physical training.

The GripAble^TM device, created by researchers at Imperial College London and clinicians at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, consists of a lightweight electronic handgrip that interacts wirelessly with a standard PC tablet to enable the user to play arm-training games. 

To use it, patients squeeze, turn, or lift the handgrip, and it vibrates in response to their performance whilst playing. The device uses a novel mechanism, which can detect the tiny flicker movements of severely paralysed patients and channel them into controlling a computer game.  

In a clinical trial of 30 patients, researchers from Imperial College London, the University of Southampton and Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust found the device enabled on average 104 upper limbs (UL) repetitions per day, whereas conventional therapy achieved 15 UL repetitions per day. 

Michelle Broderick, lead author of the study and Clinical Research Therapist in Stroke at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, said: “Stroke is a major cause of arm weakness in the UK. It can significantly impact survivors lives making it hard for them to do routine daily tasks, limiting their independence.

“Previous studies have shown that repetitive exercise is vital for improving arm weakness, but this can be difficult due to resource constraints within healthcare settings, as well as the range of challenges faced by stroke survivors during their recovery, which can limit their ability to initiate or engage in independent exercise or rehabilitation activities.”

 

Assessment and training of hand functions - GripAble

GripAble was out there way back in October 2016, HOW FUCKING INCOMPETENT DOES YOUR HOSPITAL HAVE TO BE TO NOT DO ANYTHING WITH HAND RECOVERY IN 3.5 YEARS?

Medical Devices / Diagnostics Rehabilitation / Physical Therapy Stroke "Virtual physiotherapist" helps paralysed patients exercise using computer games

The latest here:

Assessment and training of hand functions - GripAble

Looking at the hands in the videos, very obviously none of them are from stroke survivors, at least not ones that have disability in the hand.

 

"Virtual physiotherapist" helps paralysed patients exercise using computer games

I bet this never makes it to your hospital. Incompetence from the fucking failures of stroke associations who don't do one damn thing to roll out effective therapy to stroke clinics and hospitals. 

"Virtual physiotherapist" helps paralysed patients exercise using computer games

06 October 2016

A simple device can improve the ability of patients with arm disability to play physiotherapy-like computer games, according to new research.

The low-cost invention, called gripAble™, consists of a lightweight electronic handgrip, which interacts wirelessly with a standard PC tablet to enable the user to play arm-training games.  To use it, patients squeeze, turn or lift the handgrip, and it vibrates in response to their performance whilst playing. The device uses a novel mechanism, which can detect the tiny flicker movements of severely paralysed patients and channel them into controlling a computer game.
Special-training computer games, controlled by the device, have been designed for people with no previous experience of using computers. For example one computer game requires the user to squeeze repeatedly to slowly reveal a photograph.
In a new study published in PLOS ONE, researchers from Imperial College London have shown that using the device increased the proportion of paralysed stroke patients able to direct movements on a tablet screen by 50 per cent compared to standard methods. In addition, the device enabled more than half of the severely disabled patients in the study to engage with arm-training software, whereas none of the patients were able to use conventional control methods such as swiping and tapping on tablets and smartphones.
A video showing the device in action, featuring a patient case study, is below
Over five million people in the UK live with arm weakness - approximately one million of them following a stroke, plus others who have neurological and musculoskeletal conditions.  Arm weakness contributes to physical disability that requires expensive long-term care.  For example, treatment for stroke costs the NHS £9 billion a year, which is five per cent of the total NHS budget. The only intervention shown to improve arm function is repetitive, task-specific exercise but this is limited by the cost and availability of physiotherapists.
The gripAble™ device is designed for patients to use unsupervised in hospital and at home. The research tested the gripAble™ device with stroke patients who had suffered successive strokes with arm paralysis at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust over six months. The researchers assessed their ability to use gripAble™  to control mobile gaming devices such as tablets that could be used for rehabilitation and compared this to their use of conventional methods such as swiping and tapping.

We have developed the gripAble™ device to improve arm and cognitive function of patients who have mild to severe arm weaknesses. Unlike other therapies currently on the NHS, gripAble™ is a low cost device which can be used in hospitals and independently by patients at home. As such it could potentially help save the health service millions of pounds

– Dr Paul Bentley

Senior Clinical Research Fellow

They found that 93 per cent of patients were able to make meaningful movements to direct the cursor as a result of using gripAble™.  In contrast, 67 per cent of patients were able to use mobile gaming devices by swiping on a tablet. For other types of control over the tablet, such as tapping or using joysticks, the number of patients able to make meaningful movements was lower.
The success of the device was most apparent for patients with severe arm weakness: no patients in this group were able to use conventional controls to play training games, whereas 58% could use gripAble™.
In a smaller sub-group the trial also demonstrated that severely disabled patients could play computer games that involve tracking a target with almost as good accuracy as healthy people.
The clinical trial was carried out at Charing Cross Hospital, part of Imperial College Healthcare Trust, between 2014 and 2015.  The team is now carrying out a feasibility study in North West London to test the use of the device in patients’ homes.
The potential of gripAble™ as a means of delivering cost-effective physiotherapy was recognised by a NHS England Innovation Challenge Prize in early 2016.
Lead researcher Dr Paul Bentley, who is a Clinical Senior Lecturer at Imperial College London and Honorary Consultant Neurologist at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust , said: “In the UK 100,000 new cases of arm weaknesses are diagnosed each year following a stroke.  Often this impairs people’s ability to carry out daily activities, requiring long-term care. The use of mobile-gaming could provide a cost-effective and easily available means to improve the arm movements of stroke patients but in order to be effective patients of all levels of disability should be able to access it.
“We have developed the gripAble™ device to improve arm and cognitive function of patients who have mild to severe arm weaknesses.  Unlike other therapies currently on the NHS, gripAble™ is a low cost device which can be used in hospitals and independently by patients at home. As such it could potentially help save the health service millions of pounds. We now intend to further develop the device so we can help more patients who are currently suffering from the effects of poor arm and upper body mobility.”
The researchers collaborated with Human Robotics Group at Imperial College London to develop the device. The research is funded by the Imperial Confidence in Concept Award, the NHS England Innovation Challenge Prize, and the EU 7th Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development grants.
To find out more about plans for the company and the current gripAble™ clinical trial please contact Dr Paul Rinne on paul.rinne@imperial.ac.uk.
Reference : Rinne P, Mace M, Nakornchai T, Zimmerman K, Fayer S, Sharma P, et al. (2016) Democratizing neurorehabilitation: how accessible are low-cost mobile-gaming technologies for self-rehabilitation of arm disability in stroke? PLoS ONE 11(10): e0163413. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0163413
See the press release of this article

Medical Devices / Diagnostics Rehabilitation / Physical Therapy Stroke "Virtual physiotherapist" helps paralysed patients exercise using computer games

I could have used something like this. I bet if you have a stroke in the next year this device will not be in your stroke hospital. Bet your stroke hospital doesn't even have a person assigned to reading and implementing stroke research.  

Medical Devices / Diagnostics Rehabilitation / Physical Therapy Stroke "Virtual physiotherapist" helps paralysed patients exercise using computer games

A simple device can improve the ability of patients with arm disability to play physiotherapy-like computer games, according to new research.
The low-cost invention, called gripAble™, consists of a lightweight electronic handgrip, which interacts wirelessly with a standard PC tablet to enable the user to play arm-training games. To use it, patients squeeze, turn or lift the handgrip, and it vibrates in response to their performance whilst playing. The device uses a novel mechanism, which can detect the tiny flicker movements of severely paralysed patients and channel them into controlling a computer game.
Special-training computer games, controlled by the device, have been designed for people with no previous experience of using computers. For example one computer game requires the user to squeeze repeatedly to slowly reveal a photograph.
In a new study published in PLOS ONE, researchers from Imperial College London have shown that using the device increased the proportion of paralysed stroke patients able to direct movements on a tablet screen by 50 per cent compared to standard methods. In addition, the device enabled more than half of the severely disabled patients in the study to engage with arm-training software, whereas none of the patients were able to use conventional control methods such as swiping and tapping on tablets and smartphones.

Over five million people in the UK live with arm weakness - approximately one million of them following a stroke, plus others who have neurological and musculoskeletal conditions. Arm weakness contributes to physical disability that requires expensive long-term care. For example, treatment for stroke costs the NHS £9 billion a year, which is five per cent of the total NHS budget. The only intervention shown to improve arm function is repetitive, task-specific exercise but this is limited by the cost and availability of physiotherapists.

The gripAble™ device is designed for patients to use unsupervised in hospital and at home. The research tested the gripAble™ device with stroke patients who had suffered successive strokes with arm paralysis at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust over six months. The researchers assessed their ability to use gripAble™ to control mobile gaming devices such as tablets that could be used for rehabilitation and compared this to their use of conventional methods such as swiping and tapping.
They found that 93 per cent of patients were able to make meaningful movements to direct the cursor as a result of using gripAble™. In contrast, 67 per cent of patients were able to use mobile gaming devices by swiping on a tablet. For other types of control over the tablet, such as tapping or using joysticks, the number of patients able to make meaningful movements was lower.
The success of the device was most apparent for patients with severe arm weakness: no patients in this group were able to use conventional controls to play training games, whereas 58% could use gripAble™.
In a smaller sub-group the trial also demonstrated that severely disabled patients could play computer games that involve tracking a target with almost as good accuracy as healthy people.
The clinical trial was carried out at Charing Cross Hospital, part of Imperial College Healthcare Trust, between 2014 and 2015. The team is now carrying out a feasibility study in North West London to test the use of the device in patients' homes.

The potential of gripAble™ as a means of delivering cost-effective physiotherapy was recognised by a NHS England Innovation Challenge Prize in early 2016.

Lead researcher Dr Paul Bentley, who is a Clinical Senior Lecturer at Imperial College London and Honorary Consultant Neurologist at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust , said: "In the UK 100,000 new cases of arm weaknesses are diagnosed each year following a stroke. Often this impairs people's ability to carry out daily activities, requiring long-term care. The use of mobile-gaming could provide a cost-effective and easily available means to improve the arm movements of stroke patients but in order to be effective patients of all levels of disability should be able to access it.
"We have developed the gripAble™ device to improve arm and cognitive function of patients who have mild to severe arm weaknesses. Unlike other therapies currently on the NHS, gripAble™ is a low cost device which can be used in hospitals and independently by patients at home. As such it could potentially help save the health service millions of pounds. We now intend to further develop the device so we can help more patients who are currently suffering from the effects of poor arm and upper body mobility."
The researchers collaborated with Human Robotics Group at Imperial College London to develop the device. The research is funded by the Imperial Confidence in Concept Award, the NHS England Innovation Challenge Prize, and the EU 7th Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development grants.
The gripAble™ device is an example of the work of the Imperial Academic Health Science Centre (AHSC). This is a partnership between Imperial College London and three NHS Trusts, which aims to improve patient outcomes by harnessing scientific discoveries and translating them as quickly as possible into new diagnostics, devices and therapies, in the NHS and beyond. The researchers are working with Imperial Innovations, the College's technology transfer partner, to spinout gripAble™ as a digital healthcare start-up to commercialise the device.

Article: Democratizing neurorehabilitation: how accessible are low-cost mobile-gaming technologies for self-rehabilitation of arm disability in stroke? Rinne P, Mace M, Nakornchai T, Zimmerman K, Fayer S, Sharma P, et al., PLoS ONE, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0163413, published 5 October 2016.