Category: Health

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Initial Project Pitch – Sungjin Park

Sungjin Park

Project Description

  • My initial project idea is to make wearable glove that measures heart rate. My primary goal is to hide wires and sensors underneath the outer thread by making double layers of wools in the back of the glove. For better movement and stable functionality, positioning Arduino would be a key concern for this project. Since this project is meant to be pragmatic, subtle design would be a crucial part when implementing wires and sensors. My target potential wearers are people with high blood pressures and athletes so they can check their heart rate at any time. The most challenging part will be a choice of material. Since my target wearers vary in activities, I have to find proper material that falls between wool and spandex for both daily use and active use purpose.

Confident skill set

  • Programming

Weak skill set

  • Designing, stitching, and manipulating hardware

Function

  • It will transmit wearers’ heart rate to their phone consistently and measure hourly peak and low point recorded just like built-in pedometer in iphone.

Concept art

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Initial Project Pitch

Smart Knee Sleeve

Jake Cordover

 

Rehabbing from significant knee injuries/surgeries consists of different therapuetic protocols that almost always involve regaining knee flexion and extension. Consequently, physical therapists are tasked with hitting certain flexion/extension milestones throughout a recovery, however— the failure to adhere to such milestones (too much or too little) can result in lifelong loss of function.

Currently knee flexion and extension is measured with a device called a Goniometer. Goniometers are accurate and work well in clinical settings, however when patients go home and complete exercises and live their day to day lives, a Goniometer becomes of little use— hence the Smart Knee Sleeve.

The Smart Knee Sleeve is a soft, functional knee sleeve. By using strategically placed stretch sensors, the knee sleeve will communicate with devices, feeding live flexion and extension data. Patients at home can feel comfortable flexing and extending legs, knowing they are within the confines of the therapists recommended allowances. Therapists will be granted insights into how patients are completing their exercises and if there is too much or too little mobility.

However, applications of the Smart Knee Sleeve are not confined to injury rehabilitation. Additional, pragmatic applications include: examining data to deduce mechanism of injury perhaps allowing for better diagnosis, flagging data extrema as something that should be pursued further, a comparative tool to make sure both legs are performing in similar manner, a performance enhancing tool to coach proper form and alignment in various sporting activities, and many, many more applications.

Potential consumers could vary from athletes recovering from injury, to athletes wishing to find data as a performance boost, to older patients simply trying to recover to regain normal function. As a soft, functional sleeve, this device will appeal to many people, in all stages of activity.

For the execution of this project, I am confident in coding and handling data. I also have had exposure the the medical aspect of this project. I am less confident in designing and handling the physical componentry as well as the different aspects in creating a comfortable, sleek garment.

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Initial Project Pitch

Natalie Tack

Sketch

Description

This project is designed to solve the problem of people not knowing when they are overheating or experiencing hypothermia. This product is specifically designed to be worn under a large winter coat and is specifically for people who enjoy spending time outdoors in the winter months (athletes, enthusiasts, etc.).

The high-level idea of this product is that the temperature sensor monitors the body’s temperature within the coat. It is Bluetooth connected to a person’s phone and sends updates to it when there are big degree changes. For example, hypothermia can set in when the body’s temperature is 95 degrees or below, and overheating occurs when the body’s temperature is 104 degrees or higher. However, I am not sure if the temperature inside a coat will be the same as internal body temperature. However, either way, if the person’s body temperature is nearing one of these extremes, it would notify the user so that they can do something to combat either of these two conditions from occurring.

This design is meant to be pragmatic and preventative, it is easier to stop hypothermia/overheating from happening than to fix them when they do happen.

Confident

I am confident in getting the circuit constructed and the Bluetooth connected with a phone.

Less Confident

I am not confident in designing something that is comfortable. I am also not confident in sending the Bluetooth information to any app other than the default application that comes with the Flora Bluefruit LE Module.

A note: In thinking further about this product, this product may also be useful for mountain climbers, and in that regard, it may be useful to have a SPI barometric pressure/altitude sensor as well (Adafruit also makes these). These sensors in combination could help prevent a number of conditions from setting in.