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Having built a pulsed vibration wristband for someone with Parkinson's, just a few notes. For Parkinson's patients:
- there's a small-ish window in the disease progression where pulsed vibration is able to help a person regain some intentional motor control
- the device doesn't stop the tremors
- the pulsed vibration does let the brain's control signal come through stronger, so drawing/typing/moving the mouse is more intentional.
- this is no more effective than the results of levidopa/carbidopa treatment, and the levidopa/carbidopa typically calms the overall tremors
- as Parkinson's progresses, these devices become useless, and if the patient qualifies for deep brain stimulation, it's worth looking into (regain years of useful life if you're lucky).
I haven't tested the device on people with essential tremor, so I don't have anything smart to say there.
You can make a very unsophisticated version of this without a lot of hardware:
- small microcontroller with 3v outputs (XIAO's are perfect)
- 3v sealed eccentric mass motors (aliexpress $1/ea)
- elastic wristband
- usb battery
- software to pulse the motors for about 200 miliseconds for an on off sequence of about 8 times, then rest for about a second and repeat.
I have essential tremor. Hearing about new treatment options is exciting. At one time my pediatric neurologist basically said the only kind of treatment had real nasty side effects, and most recently the prescription pill I tried also presented side effects that weren't worth it.
I'm going to look into this when I can. would love to try it if it's financially feasible.
ETA: Looking at their website and all the models in the photos are older people...
As someone diagnosed with ET since high school that's kind of funny.
Pilot patients are always the easy ones. Young, motivated, otherwise healthy. Same story with early DBS work. Wake me when it works on a 70-year-old with decades of tremor and a pill organizer.
Photos skew old because ET prevalence does, but onset is bimodal, with one peak in adolescence or early adulthood. The trials for devices like this mostly enrolled older adults, as far as I know, so the evidence for younger patients is thinner. A movement disorders specialist could tell you more.
I've had very slight hand tremors for as long as I can remember. I used to think it's impossible to stretch out your hand and hold it completely steady.
A few months ago maybe I've started using more and more MSG (glutamate) on my food (maybe two teaspoons a day now), and it's pretty much gone, plus fine motor control in general (say guitar playing) is noticeably improved.
I'm also taking care to limit my vitamin A and nickel intake, but this one seems to be mostly related to the glutamate.
This is the kind of technology application that I can get behind. What a wonderful project and great to see the original person with the idea so skeptical that it could work, be outvoted and then see their idea come to life.
CK2, what makes you think that FDA cleared only means it’s “extremely similar to other approved devices”?
I think you may be confused, or are repeating something you heard in a Netflix documentary.
First, “fda cleared” means your device is “substantially equivalent” to another cleared or granted device. You can’t be cleared based on another approved device, since approval means the other device received a PMA. Second, substantial equivalence is actually quite lenient. I know, because I’ve helped clear over 50 devices.
Finally, a cleared device still can require a lot of testing. Frequently FDA requires our clients to run multimillion dollar studies to validate their devices.
Small correction: "cleared" and "approved" aren't the same thing. 510(k) means substantially equivalent to a predicate, and FDA does review safety and performance data. IIRC novel low-risk devices go through de novo instead. Still, you're right that it doesn't prove it beats placebo.
Maybe I'm just cynical but this seems suspiciously like snake oil. Seems impossible to exclude the placebo effect and the improvements are self reported (more or less).
Very interesting, I worked on something very similar for tremors, just didn’t take it to a product or a startup for reasons. Glad to see someone did it
Right concept (vibrating stimulation) wild design choices. You don't need to stimulate the fingers for this type of treatment to be effective (wrist is enough).
I’m not anti-government, but I tend to agree, what about a soft-rollout for everything whose only risk is snake oil and not actual side effects?
Like the snake oil glasses for color-blindness, we can probably prevent them from making marketing claims now that we know they don’t work, but I don’t think forcing them to go through a drug market approval is necessary, the risk is not high enough.
MIT uses a weird class numbering system. Instead of CS101, they call it 6.0002.
The first digit is the school that offers it, then after the decimal point they have their number of classes. (EECS is unusual in that it has four digits after the decimal point, most every other course has just three.) In general, classes that are required start with 001 and increment up, such that 001 is the intro course, 002 follows from that, etc. Then electives start around 015 or so.
Course 1 is Civil Engineering, Course 2 is Mechanical engineering, Course 3 is materials science, etc. 6 is Electrical and Computer engineering.
So 2.009 is a mechanical engineering course, in this case one for students towards the end of their time. It's called Product Engineering Processes, where you create a new product from beginning to production.
Funny thing is the numbers turn into the brand. Our first hire out of MIT would just say "I took 2.007" like everyone knew it was the robot contest class. Nobody outside Cambridge had a clue, but it worked as a handshake with other alumni.
Has anyone seen how the effect holds up over months? Tremor swings a lot with stress and caffeine, so a clinic measurement right after stimulation could look great. I'd want sham-controlled data on daily-life tremor, not just improvement on a drawing test.
You can make a very unsophisticated version of this without a lot of hardware:
Hopefully these folks will price it affordably.Side note: the idea was published in 2016-2017 in a few promotional videos from Microsoft research: https://www.windowscentral.com/microsofts-emma-watch-and-pro...