Recovery from a stroke takes a long time.
Just ask Derrick Sinclair.
Since suffering a stroke more than 10 years ago, he has tried everything possible to regain maximum mobility and strength in his left side.
Ms Sinclair is among a group of stroke survivors trying out new ‘smart gloves’ at the GF Strong Rehabilitation Center.
The gloves track hand and finger movements and can use that information to identify where Sinclair needs to focus his efforts.
The gloves are being developed at the University of British Columbia in partnership with Vancouver startup Texavie.
“Many of these patients need frequent assessments of their movements,” Dr. Peyman Selvati, CEO of Texabee and UBC professor, said in an interview with CTV News.
“We need to see how well they are moving, and then we need to modify their practices and routines, for example, to get the best rehabilitation and recovery.”
The glove also leverages artificial intelligence to capture movement.
“We have all the machine learning built into the software to recognize movement,” explains Dr. Janice Eng, a leading stroke rehabilitation expert at UBC who also works at Vancouver Coastal Health.
“So through artificial intelligence, we can actually tell how much the wrist is moving, how much the hand is actually open. So we’re applying those algorithms now.”
The glove has potential applications in other applications, such as video games and movies.
But Sinclair hopes that by participating in this research he can make a difference.
“I think if you participate in a program like this, you have a better chance of finding a solution,” he said. “Maybe not for myself, but for other stroke patients, who I call victims because stroke really costs lives, to have a better life.”
Research on the gloves was recently published in Nature Machine Intelligence. The gloves are not currently available to the general public, but Selvati hopes to eventually offer them to a broader consumer market.