Category: Wearables

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Orthopedics Wearables

Sensor boot guides bone injury healing

ApplySci blogs about sensor based health innovations.  We have seen far too little in the orthopedics space, which remains an area of opportunity.  This week we discussed dorsaVi‘s spine injury assessment tool, and today we will describe the “SmartBoot“.

Developed by University of Delaware researchers, SmartBoot enables physicians to monitor orthopedic patients as they recover. Users are given visual feedback to let them know if they are under- or overloading a limb after injury.

According to Professor Jill Higginson, whose student, Brian Knarr, developed the boot:  “Patients are often trained in the clinic on a bathroom scale and then sent home with crutches, with the assumption that they can consistently perform partial weight bearing on their own.”  However, research has shown that patients often bear significantly more weight on the injured foot than prescribed, which delays healing.

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Brain Wearables

Phone sensors to detect depression risk

Northwestern‘s Sohrob Saeb believes that phones could be more reliable for diagnosing depression than traditional methods.

In his recent study, data from smartphone sensors that detect location, movement, phone usage and other activities were used to assess depression risk.

GPS or phone usage data were analyzed among 28 participants for two weeks.

The “Purple Robot” app identified 87% of the participants at risk of depression (according to the PHQ-9 guidelines) based on GPS data on frequency of movement between regular locations. The more users moved around, the less likely they were to fall into the at-risk category.

By identifying the most frequent phone users, Purple Robot could detect 74% of those in the at-risk group.

Data on both GPS and phone usage were not available, preventing researchers  from seeing how Purple Robot performed when both data sets were available.

PHQ-9 is a screening tool that determines an  above-average chance of having depression.  It does not diagnose depression.

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Wearables

Temperature adaptive clothing cools and heats accordingly

UC San Diego professor Joseph Wang continues to revolutionize health focused wearable technology.  ApplySci recently described his totally noninvasive glucose monitoring tattoo, and his bio-ink pen for self monitoring.

Professor Wang is now developing clothes with integrated sensors that enable them to heat or cool wearers.  He believes this can  reduce energy costs by regulating the temperature around individuals instead of across rooms.

ApplySci sees this as another way to increase the independence of (cognitively or physically) disabled people — helping them stay warm or cool when their ability to add or remove clothing layers is limited.

The smart fabric will keep a wearer’s skin temperature at 93 degrees fahrenheit by adapting to temperature changes. The fabric will become thicker when a room gets cooler, and thinner when it gets warmer.  Polymers that expand in the cold and shrink in the heat will be incorporated into the clothing.

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fitness IoT Wearables

Samsung patent describes phone grip body fat measure

Samsung has filed a patent application describing technology that could measure body fat levels when a user grips a device. Four sensors would be incorporated into a smartphone or case.  “Input current and the intensity of the measured voltage”  are measured to determine fat levels.

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Wearables

Wearable assesses sports injuries, therapy progress

dorsaVi movement and muscle activity monitors could help sports teams improve injury assessments and document the therapy progress.  They are being used by the New Orleans Saints, Cleveland Browns, Golden State Warriors and Toronto FC.

The device includes sensors that analyze bending, twisting and stepping, accelerators, magnetometers, and gyroscopes.  Electrodes measure muscle activity near the skin’s surface.

The company’s  ViPerform  assessment modules can be linked with HD video to provide better data. The system tests an athlete’s run, knee, hamstring, functional exercise ability, lower back and neck.

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Eyes Wearables

Wearable analyzes faces, voices, surroundings

Professor Amnon Shashua is the founder of  Mobileye, a revolutionary computer vision approach to driverless cars.  He is also the developer of OrCam, artificial vision technology to assist the visually impaired.  This week he announced Casie, a wearable personal assistant.

The device is meant for the masses, but could also help the disabled. It looks like a USB stick, and can be clipped onto clothing or a necklace.  A camera and microphone record  images and sounds from one’s surroundings. Algorithms analyze faces, voices, and surrounding sights and sounds.  The information is sent to a phone, where an app can match it with social media and other data.  To ensure privacy, video and audio content are deleted after  interaction data is collected and analyzed.

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Wearables

Long term drug delivery chip implant

MIT spinout Microchips Biotech and Teva are developing a long-term drug delivery chip implant.

The microchip array  can be implanted in the body and programmed to release controlled doses of drugs over months or years. Dosage or frequency can be changed wirelessly from an app. The company claims that the device can deliver medications for 16 years.

It is a self-contained hermetically-sealed device, implanted and removed in a doctor’s office.  The chip can store hundreds of therapeutic doses, and releases each at precise times. The implant has been clinically validated in human studies delivering parathyroid hormone in osteoporosis patients.

This could represent a painless replacement to daily injections, or simply improve patient compliance.

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Heart Wearables

Heart monitoring t-shirt

Imec and Holst Centre researchers have developed a smart t-shirt that monitors heart rate, heart rate variability, activities performed and calories burned.  The data is shared via the cloud to a user or doctor’s phone, tablet or computer.

The fabric contains miniaturized electronic modules with high accuracy and ultra-low power multi-sensor data acquisition chips. Processing, battery and bluetooth are embedded. The module can be removed to wash the shirt or charge the battery.

The original properties of the fabric are preserved, and the t-shirt remains flexible, stretchable, breathable, lightweight and washable.

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Monitoring Sensors Wearables

Clinical trial wearable by Google

Google X has built a clinical grade health wearable intended for use in clinical trials.  It measures pulse, heart rhythm, skin temperature, light exposure, and noise levels.  The device can collect trial data both inside and outside of the lab.  Google’s life science head, Andrew Conrad, first described the wearable to Bloomberg this morning.

The company is researching several potential uses for the device, including monitoring patients discharged from hospitals.

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Categories
Heart Sensors Wearables

Necklace, scale, cuff to monitor vitals, help manage CHF

toSenses‘s CoVa necklace, and prototype floor pad and cuff/handle combination, measure pulse oximetry, heart rate, blood pressure, respiration rate and temperature.  The various forms of monitoring are meant to improve compliance and ease of use.

CoVa has received FDA clearance, and is primarily used as a congestive heart failure alert/management system.

The scale-like pad uses bioimpedance and ECG to measure thoracic fluid levels and also measures weight.

The cuff/handle device measures vital signs, plus blood pressure. The user holds the device at the stomach to measure thoracic impedance, and inflatable bladders in the arm cuff compress the radial artery to measure blood pressure.

WEARABLE TECH + DIGITAL HEALTH NYC 2015 – JUNE 30 @ NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES.  REGISTER HERE.

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Wearables

Connected bikini warns of sunburn risk

A Spinali bikini, developed by Marie Spinali of Mulhouse,  measures exposure to ultraviolet radiation and alerts wearers when they are at risk of sunburn.  Its waterproof sensor measures UV exposure and sends smartphone alerts.  There is room for error, however, as the alarms are based on a user’s own skin type description.

Obviously more of a toy than an exact science, users can take advantage of some fun features.  The bikini’s “Valentine” function sends  messages to a partner’s smartphone, prompting them to apply sunscreen to the wearer’s skin at  just the right time.

WEARABLE TECH + DIGITAL HEALTH NYC 2015 – JUNE 30 @ NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES.  REGISTER HERE.

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Diabetes Wearables

Integrated insulin sensor, infusion, data, notification system

Medtronic’s MiniMed Connect is placed in a pocket or on a keychain. It reads, displays and transmits data from the company’s implanted pumps.

An external glucose sensor and insulin pump continually deliver insulin through an infusion system under the skin. It can be programmed to shut off automatically if glucose levels reach predefined thresholds.

Glucose and insulin levels are displayed on an app and the on the web.  The device can send texts to family members if glucose is too high or low.

In related news, the company has recently established a partnership with Samsung to develop secure applications for diabetes management. They will create apps optimized to display data from Medtronic’s devices on Samsung’s phones.

WEARABLE TECH + DIGITAL HEALTH NYC 2015 – JUNE 30 @ NEW YOR ACADEMY OF SCIENCES.  REGISTER HERE.