Feedback matters for any medical technology developer. When it comes to wearable devices, listening is essential, Lucy Jung advises.
Parkinson’s is one of the world’s fastestgrowing neurodegenerative disorders affecting 10 million people worldwide. Despite the best available medical and surgical interventions, people with Parkinson’s are often frustrated as they remain significantly limited in their activities.
Charco Neurotech has developed CUE1, a focused vibrotactile stimulation device for people with Parkinson’s. Since we began working with people with long-term conditions over a decade ago, we have always adhered to the principle of listening to those whom we want to support. We started by listening to their daily lives, the needs and problems that they have, the things that affect their symptoms more and those that help reduce the symptoms. One of the key inspirations was that people with Parkinson’s tended to mention that there were various simulations present in their everyday lives which were helping them with some of their motor symptoms, including but not limited to stiffness, slowness, rigidity and walking. From there, exploring these simulations further began our initial stages of prototyping where we could visit people in their homes to try out various methods of providing stimulation.
One of the key inspirations was that people with Parkinson’s tended to mention that there were various simulations present in their everyday lives which were helping them with some of their motor symptoms
These early prototypes of the device included only a stimulation aspect. Through feedback received from the community of users, the device was made smart (i.e. with Bluetooth functionality) to incorporate medication alerts, due to the timing of medicine being very important with Parkinson’s, as well as the ability to adjust the stimulation settings. Furthermore, another pain point for people with Parkinson’s was related to the infrequent clinician visits. Providing an update on how one’s symptoms have been in the past six to 12 months is a challenging task, especially as symptoms vary daily for people with Parkinson’s. Due to this, an easy-to-use symptom self-assessment was also added to theapplication. These changes had a direct impact on the interaction with people with Parkinson’s.
In order to make the feedback from users more streamlined, we decided to also contribute to the local communities across the UK. That helped our engineers to have global feedback that significantly improved the quality of the device and optimised processes for the R&D team.
Community feedback is very important for wearable devices as the end user will often use these devices, so they have to want to wear them. Past this, the feedback loop is par amount for any MedTech company, as it provides a pillar for success and trust for all parties involved.
- Lucy Jung is cofounder and CEO at Charco Neurotech
