2022 Winners

Saudi Arabia

This project is aimed at introducing a modular exoskeletal hand rehabilitation device, ExoHeal. ExoHeal is an exoskeleton aimed at providing rehabilitation to patients with hand stroke/paralysis by effectively retraining and recovering their motor functions. Unlike other hand exoskeletons which use pneumatic actuators, ExoHeal uses high torque metal gear micro servos. This contributes to the overall portability and functionality of the device by being both lightweight and capable of enough torque capacity to open a hand with high flexor tone. The mechanical design of the exoskeleton allows for stimulation of independent movement in each phalanx. ExoHeal utilizes an intuitive rehabilitation routine based on utilizing the various concepts of neuroplasticity and mirror learning to retrain the motor cortex by inducing neuroplastic changes. ExoHeal is an exoskeleton based performing bilateral movement training by mirroring the movement of the working hand in parallel. By performing bilateral movement training, the impaired hand of the patient can recover at a faster rate. This combined with an app that monitors the progress and suggests exercises based on user patterns and those described by the physician makes ExoHeal unique and stand out compared to the already existing hand rehabilitation devices. To be available in multiple languages, The smartphone application is divided into a doctors and patients app. The doctor's app allows the physician to remotely monitor the progress and guide various patients from anywhere around the world. It acts as a means of communication between the doctor and the patient and allows the physician to program the patient’s device to operate as per the user’s condition. The patient’s app was programmed to work based on user feedback. Exercise routines were pre-programmed to activate in accordance with the different stages of the rehabilitation routine. The app works as a guide in the absence of a physician and so it guides the patient throughout the various exercises comprised in the different stages of the rehabilitation process and sends statistical results to the doctor. The device ExoHeal improves the medical rehabilitation process by introducing an affordable paralysis treatment. The rehabilitation routine is capable of accelerating the rate of recovery by approximately 30%. It successfully solved the problems lacking in the already existent rehabilitation devices by being more precise, portable, quick & responsive. Although the device can perform the extension/flexion movement it cannot perform abduction/ adduction movement arising the need for more complex mechanisms to be developed in the future in order to achieve complete 21 Degrees of freedom (DOF) of the hand fingers. The application was able to monitor progress and suggest exercises. In cases of irrecoverable motor loss, the device was found to be capable of being used as a daily driver to partake in routinely tasks. At present, a more complex and lightweight design is being developed to further enhance its capabilities and widening its area of accessibility within the medical industry.

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Sri Lanka

The "Nana Shilpa" is a mobile application system that is developed for screening and refinement of dyscalculia and dysgraphia learning disabilities in primary school students using the Localized languages. In the application, 4 variants of dyscalculia and 4 variants of dysgraphia disability conditions are considered. Using the medically consulted activities and results and processing the data using modern machine learning and deep learning techniques, the application predicts the possible risk of dyscalculia and dysgraphia learning disability condition in the students. All the results of screening tests and risk prediction history are stored in the report archive for the future reference of the user. If any student gets the prediction result of the possible risk of the disability condition considered in the application, it provides refinement activities in the multi-sensory environment to improve the condition. The application is built with attractive color combinations, animations and a multi-sensory environment which is suitable for primary school students to take the screening test and refinement activities without feeling distracted and pressured.

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United States

Melodic is an integrated system that provides professional speech therapy for children with hearing impairment via a multisensory edge device and web applications. Training activities provided by Melodic cover breath training, mouth shape training, and sound training. Supported by Microsoft Azure, we developed a highly scalable system that utilizes cognitive analysis for mouth movement recognition, storage and analytics for behavior data, and power BI and app service for web applications. Around 1.5 billion people live with hearing loss in the world, and 430 million of them can speak after speech rehabilitation, especially prelingual deaf children. In contrast, speech pathologist resource is limited, the number of which in the US is only 120,094. Besides, traditional speech therapy costs about $24,000 per year, which can be a high expenditure for most families. To ameliorate the current situation, Melodic provides customized services to both children and pathologists. With physical interaction and big data analysis, it ensures the professional degree of therapy care while keeping a low cost compared to existing products. Taking a long-term view, we envision Melodic growing as a platform based on Azure. By providing hardware and software interfaces, Melodic can be empowered by more customized training activities developed by the community.

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