81–90 of 92 posts
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Well, so what? It seems to be a standard medical practice. It only sounds scary because it's new / we're used to have it sound scary in TV shows.
It also sounds expensive.
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It is wonderful isn't it? My opinion as a biomedical engineer is that there is a lack of exposure of these real problems because, really, how many people know someone with Parkinsons? But when companies like this solve them in such an elegant way they can appear pretty cool and dare I say "sexy". So its an obvious solution, but I wouldn't say its an obvious problem. The list of problems is probably huge and a forum f…
" forum for capable engineers and designers to browse and help solve them would be awesome." That is an awesome idea - it seems like I've seen/heard of something similar, but if not, I'm a web programmer who could bang that together rather quickly. Before I do, has anyone heard of an existing site/forum?
The hard part here is building a community of people who will contribute problems and content around problems. This might be bootstrapped at the beginning either by putting effort in searching the web for such problems, and asking experts around the web about problems, and slowly building a database.
Such content could be a pull for some groups of people, many of them will be more interested in solutions ,but some will be a source of more problems.
And there's also the question of exposing the information in such a way to encourage innovation and not just reading.Not sure what the right way to do this, but it's interesting.
It's not easy to create a high quality content/community site around this , but when solved well this could be a really valuable site.
This is interesting, but IMHO, will not be as useful in most cases of Parkinson's disease. 1) Parkinsonian tremor is typically at rest or with distraction. When you actually engage in purposeful action, such as using a spoon, the tremor usually dampens or goes away. 2) The main problem in Parkinson's is actually "bradykinesia" or slowness of movement. A more accurate term, in my opinion, is slowness of motor planning…
(My father has PD, my father-in-law had PD, I am a webmaster for a PD news/events/support groups website, and we are on the board for Struther's Parkinson's Center in Minneapolis. Which is to say, I live and breathe PD daily, in a very personal way, through relatives and close friends, as well as doctors who have dedicated their entire lives to PD. I see first-hand what PD medications and DBS surgeries do to people, over a period of many years.)
Your post is mind-boggingly misinformed and heartless. The "relatively safe and effective" medications you mention are not safe or very effective at all. They carry serious side effects for most patients and get less and less effective as time goes on. Even in the honeymoon years when the meds are still relatively effective, people still suffer in-between dosages, which is to say several times a day. The fact that people prefer being on them than being without them is a testament to how bad PD is, not how "safe" these meds are.
Likewise, the DBS surgery is quite risky - so much so that you have to be relatively young and healthy to get it, e.g. very few people over 75 are even eligible. Moreover, the improvements are typically in the 40%-80% range, far from the 100% you so happily imagine, so MOST patients who undergo DBS still have to take medication. The risk of stroke from the surgery is 2% and the risk of infection requiring another surgery is super high at 4%, to name just two. If that's not enough for you, the risk of DEATH from DBS surgery is around 0.5%. Moreover, it is NOT a one-time procedure. The batteries implanted in the chest run out, and then you get to have another surgery.
DBS, while brain surgery, is the more elegant solution. Your tremor goes away, rather than requiring a superficial "hack" like this spoon.
What a bad, cruel joke.
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Wonderful; like OS X's "Slow Keys" but for the mouse pointer instead. This should be included as a built-in accessibility option in every operating system. Have you thought about open-sourcing your implementation to encourage others to take a jab at it and port it to other platforms?
Hey, thanks! I'd also love to see it built in to operating systems someday. It'd be much cleaner and easier to implement there as well. When I wrote steadymouse I had two choices: 1) Implement a driver (which is overkill if you ask me) or 2) Use a mouse hook in a very convoluted way (As is, the low level mouse hook doesn't easily let you "modify and pass on" mouse data). Applying DSP math to the mouse would be much e…
I'm a little late commenting, but I developed a Windows app [1] that does exactly this for the mouse. It basically applies some fancy FIR filters to the x and y deltas. [1] www.steadymouse.com
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Hey, thanks! I'd also love to see it built in to operating systems someday. It'd be much cleaner and easier to implement there as well. When I wrote steadymouse I had two choices: 1) Implement a driver (which is overkill if you ask me) or 2) Use a mouse hook in a very convoluted way (As is, the low level mouse hook doesn't easily let you "modify and pass on" mouse data). Applying DSP math to the mouse would be much e…
Thanks for the product, and thanks for considering to make it opensource. If you decide to go that route and have issues deciding what license to use, etc, please let me know, I can put you in touch with an expert in licensing, etc who can help you for free. And contribute code, ofc.
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" forum for capable engineers and designers to browse and help solve them would be awesome." That is an awesome idea - it seems like I've seen/heard of something similar, but if not, I'm a web programmer who could bang that together rather quickly. Before I do, has anyone heard of an existing site/forum?
It sounds like an obvious solution doesn't it ;) ? The key to making this work would be an adequate capture of the context as well as a description of the problem. In the product design world we use "Personas" as a vehicle for packaging problems into descriptions of user needs. They give the user a demographic and allow the designer to imagine that person and how they might use a potential solution. This allows to de…
I'll look these comments & site over and discuss with friends a bit; obviously, creating a site is the easy part
I would like to "sponsor" a few of these for folks. Does anyone know of a resource, non-profit, or...something that can help facilitate that?
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Do we have people who study all three?
It is , in my opinion, an obvious solution. Or at least it should be for anyone who took control theory classes (or learned it by itself). So I guess is that a/ people who know engineering don't know what medical problems are, and (more likely) b/ there's a long, long way from an idea to working product.