InPrint is a lightweight, thin-film metal temporary tattoo that tracks tremors and drug usage for Parkinson’s patients. Parkinson’s is the second most common neurodegenerative disease and it can take up to six months for patients to find an effective drug regimen. Neurologists often change a patient’s treatment plan every two to three years due to the disease’s progression and have no way of accurately monitoring their symptoms during these transition periods. Applied onto the skin like a sticker, InPrint offers an accessible, low-cost method of detecting tremors while recording their duration and severity. By using the connected InPrint mobile app, patients can set medication reminders and input their drug intake while neurologists can evaluate patient symptoms to create a personalized medication schedule. Not only does InPrint make it easier to precisely monitor tremors, it can also shorten the six-month period typically needed to create a stable drug regimen.
Autonomic nervous system (ANS) disorders often go misdiagnosed or undiagnosed by physicians, especially in pediatric patients with less progressed pathologies. Delayed diagnosis exacerbates physiological and psychobehavioral symptoms associated with this class of diseases. AxoLog is a wearable screening tool catered to pediatric patients to allow for non-invasive and child-friendly diagnosis. The device employs electrodermal responses to quantitatively measure the nervous system response to a controlled clinical stimulus. With this device, we hope to reduce misdiagnosis in the short-term and lead to a reduction in physical and social implications for patients in the long term. Our device will create an impact in the clinical space by improving the diagnostic and treatment pathway for ANS disorders.
Laparoscopy is a form of surgery done through a series of small incisions that is becoming the standard for many procedures. Graspers are important tools used in laparoscopy, which allow surgeons to grip and manipulate tissue. Current graspers use a compressive head made of metal jaws with teeth that grip tissue. These graspers have a risk of injury, including perforating, tearing, or crushing delicate tissues. Complications from this form of tissue injury lead to negative health outcomes for patients and increased costs for hospitals. Our proposed solution is Lamprey, which helps surgeons perform laparoscopic surgery without tissue damage by facilitating atraumatic tissue manipulation. Lamprey uses vacuum power to grip tissue and thus spreads applied force over a greater area, resulting in lower pressure. This makes Lamprey safer than conventional graspers while still providing a strong grip on tissue.
Many international development organizations strive to improve livelihood around the world by providing products and services to those in need. Organizations rely on field surveys with target communities as the primary form of data collection to uncover the progress of their programs, but these methods are subject to response biases as well as being expensive and time-intensive. Sensen aims to strengthen the reliability of information between international development organizations and the beneficiaries they serve. The Sensen platform provides organizations with a robust and cost-effective solution for monitoring and evaluation to understand usage and performance of products in remote, low-resource settings. The core components of the platform are a cellular-enabled datalogger and a web analytics dashboard. The datalogger attaches to devices to measure, track, and upload information about product usage. This usage data is processed by analytical algorithms and turned into actionable information to support organizational decision-making.
Aerial Research Intelligence (ARI) is a service that allows search and rescue personnel to expand their options for locating missing persons in a more efficient manner using drone technology and machine learning capabilities. ARI can be used with any small unmanned aerial system that autonomously searches the area around an initial planning point and quickly processes aerial image data to detect people using a trained neural network. Using RGB and thermal video data from sensors on board the drone platform, ARI is able to determine images and GPS locations that indicate the presence of a missing person, which greatly speeds up the human intensive activity of reviewing footage.
In 2015, pneumonia was the leading cause of death in patients under the age of 5, claiming almost one million children worldwide. It has been reported by UNICEF that there is a need for access to a more affordable diagnostic method to reduce the number of deaths in populations with limited access to medical infrastructure. Tabla seeks to meet this need by providing an inexpensive method of diagnosing pneumonia. The device sends sound waves into the body using a surface exciter, records acoustic backscatter with a digital stethoscope, and analyzes the received signal in order to assess the presence of pneumonia. Tabla provides an order of magnitude improvement on portability, accessibility and cost over the current gold standard of chest x-ray, targeting patients in areas with limited access to advanced medical care. The device has IRB approval at UCSF and is currently being tested with adult and pediatric patients.
