Elitac Wearables is hosting a free Zoom webinar on 27 May, 4.00-5.15 pm CEST, exploring the extraordinary potential that haptic feedback may offer for wearable medical devices.
Merijn Klarenbeek (CEO, Elitac Wearables), who will co-host the webinar, explains, “We’ve been developing haptic feedback wearables for nine years now. In this time, we’ve witnessed enormous improvements in both haptic technology and integration techniques. And we see huge potential for medical wearables with integrated haptic feedback to improve patients’ lives and medical working practices.
“It’s inspiring to look at the wearables being researched just in our immediate network. For example, our ScienceSuit haptic feedback R&D hardware is currently being used in projects ranging from exoskeleton feedback and navigation for visually impaired users to augmenting surgery.
Pitfalls of developing wearables
“But developing any new product can be a lengthy and uncertain process. We see a lot of promising wearables struggle and stumble in the development process, and never make it to market. This can be for a variety of reasons, such as insufficient technical know-how or financial resources, poor planning or lack of commercialisation partners. Our goal for this webinar is to remove some of these stumbling blocks.
Expert speakers
“To this end, we have invited the leading authority on haptic feedback technology and two expert researchers who have developed or are currently developing medical wearables. Prof Van Erp will explain how haptic feedback works, the current state of the technology and potential applications.
“The other speakers will discuss the practical side of developing medical wearables, both for patients and medical practitioners. Prof Kingma will discuss how he brought the BalanceBelt, a wearable for balance disorder patients, to market. Coming from another perspective, Prof Ramsey will share his experience developing the NeuroShirt, a haptic feedback wearable that augments neuronavigation for surgeons. This wearable is currently at the prototyping stage and ready for clinical validation.”
A diverse audience
René Keessen (Business Development Manager, Elitac Wearables) will co-host the webinar together with Merijn. He adds, “Our aim is to bring together a diverse group of people interested in developing medical wearables with haptic feedback: Innovation managers of medical device companies, wearables start-ups and scale-ups, researchers and medical practitioners. And this will be a singular opportunity to learn from and ask questions of our distinguished speakers.
“We’re hoping the webinar will spark a whole raft of new wearable developments: Improving the daily lives of patients and allowing medical practitioners to work more safely and/or efficiently.”
The webinar is free to attend and will take place on Zoom on 27 May, 4.00-5.15 pm CEST.
If you cannot attend on the day, please feel free to register and we will send you the recording afterwards.
