Originally designed to educate the general public about the difficulties faced by people with the disease of Parkinson’s, a vibrating pen developed by two British students has been shown to benefit patients.
Named “ARC pen”, the prototype developed by two students from the Royal College of Art and Imperial College London would, against all odds, allow micrographs to be corrected: the tendency to write smaller and smaller over time, a symptom commonly seen in patients with Parkinson’s. According to student observations, 86% of patients who tested it wrote larger after using this pen.
It seems that it is by stimulating the muscles of the hand that the “ARC pen” would allow patients to better control their writing. After using this device, patients would therefore have an easier time controlling their tremors in order to write legibly.
This pen prototype is now being developed by Dopa Solutions. At the same time, this innovative company is considering other concrete ways to help Parkinson’s patients, by integrating these vibrations into everyday objects such as computer mice for example.
In the same spirit, Google announced in November 2014 the marketing of a spoon innovative to compensate for hand tremors associated with Parkinson’s disease.
In France, the Parkinson disease affects 1% of those over 65, ie between 100,000 and 120,000 people, with 8,000 new cases reported each year. The most marked symptoms of this neurodegenerative disease are tremors.
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