Weill Cornell Medicine Wearable Aims to Treat Hand Edema Patients

Researchers from Weill Cornell Medicine have created a hand-worn wearable device containing a knitted robotic textile to assist hand edema patients.

According to the press release, hand edema is the appearance of swelling caused by excessive fluids, often resulting from an injury or disease. Although the typical treatment practice for this condition consists of a manual edema massage (MEM) performed by a trained therapist, this remedy can be expensive and hard to access.

To improve treatment practices for this condition while leveraging the capabilities of technology, Cindy (Hsin-Liu) Kao, PhD, assistant professor of human-centered design in the College of Human Ecology and director of the Hybrid Body Lab, and a research team developed a custom solution to assist patients remotely.

Known as KnitDema, this device consists of knitted wearable technology that massages problematic areas with sequential compression through robotic actuators. Placed over a single finger, this knitted robotic textile contains shape metal alloy (SMA) springs within the knitted material.

“Instead of having to schedule a hard-to-get visit with a therapist for MEM, we envision this as something that people could take home with them. They would go to their rehab doctor and their occupational or physical therapist once, and at that session they would be able to configure the right amount of compression for daily use, then adjust as necessary,” said Kao in a press release.

Kao and the research team created this device with the help of Weill Cornell Medicine physicians and therapists from the Cayuga Medical Center (CMC) Department of Physical Therapy.

Kao noted that inspiration for KnitDema derived from a previous device known as KnitDermis. Also developed in Kao’s lab, KnitDermis was a wearable device that provided users with tactile feedback.

“In the user studies for KnitDermis, a lot of the feedback that we got from participants was that people were really interested in having something like a personalized on-skin massage device, or for acupressure to serve their individual needs,” said Kao.

Similarly, researchers from other institutions have aimed to leverage wearable devices to assist patients in managing their health.

In August 2022, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers created a wireless skin sensor to collect data such as glucose concentrations, blood pressure, heart rate, and activity.

Researchers noted the growth of wearable device use in healthcare and how various conditions could be treated using them. Thus, they created a wearable skin sensor to collect information that could then be recorded on a smartphone.

Researchers have also aimed to leverage the capabilities of common smartwatches to assist with disease tracking and detection.

In April 2022, researchers from the University of Michigan described how a smartwatch feature could use heart rate data to track COVID-19 symptoms.

Using data from Fitbits worn by various medical interns and students who received a positive test for COVID-19, researchers evaluated how the disease affected health indicators. According to their research, heart rate activity was highly indicative of COVID-19 progression, as it increased per step after the onset of symptoms.