Many stroke survivors lose use of one of their arms, requiring prolonged and costly physical therapy beyond what is covered by most health insurance plans. Through co-design with patients in their homes, our team continues to research and design a personalized system for patients’ homes that will cost under $500 when completed.
In this lightning talk, I will explain our methodology for building patients’ trust to design a customized system for and with them, using their input to design a system they’ll be proud to have in their home. The resulting system is a set of 3D-printed objects that are manipulated with the patient’s impaired arm in guided exercises, which are observed and assessed by a machine learning algorithm using an integrated Kinect camera. As the patient interacts with the system over time, the system’s targeted therapy for the patient will improve based upon the patient’s specific impairment.