A wearable for Parkinson’s disease sufferers

Emma” is a wrist wearable that can help people suffering with Parkinson’s disease, created by Haiyan Zhang, Innovation Director at Microsoft Research in Cambridge.

The device is named as the Parkinson’s sufferer that helped Haiyan create the device, Emma Lawton.

How it works?

The Parkinson’s disease is an incurable degenerative disorder of the central nervous system causes body tremors. 
This disease makes it impossible for her to draw straight lines or write legibly.

With the wearable on her wrist, however, normal writing and drawing is possible:

“The Emma Watch uses vibrating motors — similar to those found in mobile phones — to distract the brain into focusing on something other than trying to control the patient’s limbs. Put simply, Zhang believes Lawton’s brain is at war with itself — half is trying to move her hand, the other half is trying to stop it. The two signals battle and amplify each other, causing the tremors. The device stops that feedback loop”

“It’s like injecting white noise into that feedback loop in order to disrupt it”

Take a look at the presentation video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qlzq6uAT-4Q


References


[embed]https://blogs.microsoft.com/transform/feature/my-god-its-better-emma-can-write-again-thanks-to-a-prototype-watch-raising-hope-for-parkinsons-disease/[/embed]


[embed]https://blogs.microsoft.com/transform/feature/my-god-its-better-emma-can-write-again-thanks-to-a-prototype-watch-raising-hope-for-parkinsons-disease/[/embed]


[embed]https://blogs.microsoft.com/transform/feature/my-god-its-better-emma-can-write-again-thanks-to-a-prototype-watch-raising-hope-for-parkinsons-disease/[/embed]


[embed]https://blogs.microsoft.com/transform/feature/my-god-its-better-emma-can-write-again-thanks-to-a-prototype-watch-raising-hope-for-parkinsons-disease/[/embed]