Reimagining rehabilitation: TG0 speaks at the MedTech Futures event in Cambridge
The challenges facing the UK’s healthcare industry are well documented. With an ageing population, staff shortages and a long backlog after the Covid-19 pandemic, the NHS is being squeezed from every direction. But with new technologies offering the potential for improvement and innovation, these pressures are not insurmountable. On the contrary, it’s an opportunity for an exciting, sector-wide period of change.
At the MedTech Futures Event in Cambridge, run by Health Tech Enterprise, leaders from the industry came together to discuss what the future of world-class care might look like and how technology can help us get there.
As a grant winner of the MedTech Navigator Programme, TG0 was invited to speak about our work in seamless control systems. TG0’s research and development lead, Olivia Cowling, and I presented some of the research we’ve been doing with etee, our patented finger-tracking solution.
Using state-of-the-art algorithms to detect individual finger movement and force, etee could transform at-home rehabilitation routines. The device is simple for patients to use and can give therapists the ability to accurately monitor a patients’ progress remotely and customise their treatment plans.
In 2022, we conducted preliminary studies in post-stroke patients alongside the University of South Wales. The results so far have been encouraging. Because we can quantify finger movement and strength, we’re able to track tiny changes and visually amplify small efforts to motivate patients. Gamified rehabilitation exercises increased the patients’ engagement with the sessions and improved the movement of the affected hand.
We got a lot of positive feedback at the event, particularly from researchers who were interested in how this technology can be applied to triage situations. One clinician, for example, shared how he has been measuring grip strength by how tightly someone can squeeze his two fingers. It’s very subjective, so he sees the potential for etee to provide a more accurate metric. Others were encouraged by the fact that the etee device already has a CE mark, which means it can be used in a clinical setting faster than other solutions still at a prototype stage.
Finger tracking has huge potential to transform the field of medical assistive technology. And we’re looking forward to collaborating with more organisations to explore new applications of this technology in the future.
