Manumeter for Monitoring and Assessing Upper Extremity Rehabilitation

Brief Description

After an injury or neurological event, a patient’s rehabilitation requires long-term assessment and monitoring, especially in the upper extremities that are important for everyday tasks.UCI researchers have developed the Manumeter to quantitatively assess and log a patient’s hand movements without external therapist intervention.

Suggested uses

·Rehabilitation: real-time feedback allows the device to inform a patient if exercises are being performed incorrectly or be used as an input device for computer-based rehabilitation games

·Assessment tool: logged movement information can inform healthcare providers of patient progress and adherence to rehabilitation exercises

Features/Benefits

·Objective: quantitative feedback is provided by device rather than subjective observations

·Sensitive: biased to detect specific hand movements (rather than responding to all movements made by the hand, arm, trunk, and lower extremity)

·Ergonomic: small form-factor is unobtrusive for everyday tasks Data-friendly: built-in micro-USB port facilitates transfer of data

Full Description

Patients can suffer from impaired motor function of the hand, wrist, and arm by situations such as neurologic episodes, traumatic events, or occupational hazards from prolonged desk-work.Conventionally, motor activity logs are utilized to assess motor functionality. However, these interpretations are subjective, and can lead to inconsistent assessment results. Current device options for non-tethered hand and wrist monitoring are not ideal. Inertial sensors can be convoluted by movements that are nonspecific to the hand while glove-based systems can be bulky, obstructive, and difficult to wear for a long time.

The Manumeter is a user-friendly and objective solution to monitor and log movements in the hand, wrist, and arm. The unobtrusive device consists of only a watch-like data logger and magnetic sensor ring worn on one of the fingers. This ergonomic design enables long-term use and promotes better patient compliance. The Manumeter provides quantitative monitoring to be used by both the patient and clinician. Data from the sensor can be transferred to a computer and be read by both patient and clinician to assess rehabilitation progress and adherence to prescribed rehabilitation exercises.The Manumeter allows accurate measurement of a patient’s ability to use an impaired limb in the real world and provides feedback to patient and doctor to ultimately improve patient outcomes.

Patent Status

State Of Development

Device has been developed.

Related Materials

• Systems And Methods For Monitoring Hand And Wrist Movement Nizan Friedman, Justin Rowe, David J. Reinkensmeyer, Mark G. Bachman US Patent Application No.: US20140257143A1 Patent pending. - 09/11/2014