After we received the long-awaited CE certification for our AnyHand a few weeks ago, the first patients were now allowed to test our device: The occupational therapy practice Odenthal in Neuss specialises in hand rehabilitation and was already one of the most important contacts for LIME during development for feedback and comprehension questions. We are therefore more than happy to have been able to provide Anette Philipp's team with an AnyHand for a few days, to gather further insights and to offer the first patients training with the AnyHand - many thanks to the team on site!
Pascal spent a few days in Neuss to experience our hand therapy robot in practice. The first test person, patient zero so to speak, delighted us with this feedback: "Really cool device you've developed there!" After breaking his metacarpal bone a few months ago, he was diagnosed with CRPS, the complex regional pain syndrome: After, for example, an injury to the hand or a fracture in the forearm, there can be a dysregulation of the nervous system that triggers the sometimes chronic pain.[1] He found the therapy with the AnyHand pleasant and it was also visually well received: "The design is also very snazzy!"
Another patient used the AnyHand assistive therapy. Here, the limited hand actively performs the movement and is mechanically supported to exhaust the range of motion when its own strength runs out. After her stroke, the patient can use this therapy to train the holistic movement of the hand and thus improve mobility and coordination bit by bit. The patient described the 15-minute session as intense and quite challenging and felt an improvement in stretching her fingers immediately after the treatment.
In addition to the actual therapy, an important guiding question for our observation was: How does the integration into the daily therapy routine work, do the preparations function smoothly and, above all, save time? For the different hand sizes, the finger holders can be mounted in three sizes. No problem for the Neuss therapists even at the first attempt. The automatic size adjustment, which takes the hand width and thumb position into account, also took only a few seconds, as planned.
After three days of observation, Pascal sums up: "We treated a total of 16 patients with different indications such as osteoarthritis, flexor tendon injury, fracture and stroke with the AnyHand. The feedback was consistently positive, which is an enormous motivational boost for the entire team!
It is therefore ideal that production has restarted after short-term Corona delays and that the first AnyHands can be used in clinics and practices in the near future.
[1] Deutsche Schmerzgesellschaft e. V. : Komplex Regionales Schmerzsyndrom. CRPS (accessed 16.06.20)