Recovering stroke patients may soon have a new device to help them work on regaining control of their hands without help from a physical therapist.
Its a medical device in the form of a glove, and the company making it wants to actively engage the brains of these patients to help re-establish the neural connections between the brain and muscles in the hand.
The glove, being developed by HandMinder, includes a set of programmable micromotors that sits on the wrist and send sequences of vibrations to the fingers and wrist. The idea is that those vibration would trigger the brain to send movement signal to the right muscles.
About 795,000 Americans have strokes each year, and 40 percent of them experience impairments that require special care, according to the National Stroke Association.
Current treatments, like functional electrical stimulation, leave out a key piece in rehabilitation, Bell said. They provide a one-way street to the brain, or a stimulation that makes something happen locally, he said. Electrical stimulation causes the movement. A physical solution is being applied to what is largely a neurological problem.
The science behind the device is based on research by co-founder and neuroscientist Yu Liu at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center and backed by research like this 2006 study published in the Archives of Physicial Medicine and Rehabilitation. It supports the idea that hand function after stroke is directly related to brain activity, and that interventions including muscle vibration and electrical nerve stimulation in combination with mental practice result in brain cells being more easily activated over time.
The question is can HandMinder show that its device does this? Bell said the team is ready to develop its third prototype, except for one all-too-familiar startup problem: it needs more money. To get that money, they will conduct a very small study targeted at obtaining data specifically for the hand, to be completed by the end of the year. Other companies are commercializing similar technology for other parts of the body, which helps validate HandMinders approach, he said, but to sway investors, the company needs data specific to the hand. The study would measure how much patients use their hands after a period of treatment with the device, and to what extend their fine motor skills have improved.
Once a round of financing is secured, the company will proceed with having the technology cleared as a class 2 medical device with a predicate. Rather than going to market immediately after that, HandMinder wants to conduct another trial to show that its device is more effective than existing products, Bell said. It also hopes to work on expanding use of the device to other applications.
The value proposition for the device over others like Biomove 3000, KineticMuscles Hand Mentor, Bioness H200, Myomos mPower 1000 and Zynexs NeuroMove is that it not only engages the brain but is portable, can be used without the supervision of a physical therapist and has a price point between $1,000 and $2,000, Bell said.
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Stroke rehab glove combines mental practice and muscle stimulation to improve hand function