Empathy-creating digital device could benefit caregivers
A new digital device could dramatically improve the lives of people with movement disorders such as Parkinson’s disease by increasing empathy in caregivers.
The device records muscle movement in one person and transmits the data wirelessly in real time to another person nearby. The result is that the non-patient ends up experiencing the same kind of non-voluntary muscle movement as the patient.
It’s called a Sym-Pulse Tele-Empathy Device. Developed by Toronto’s Klick Labs, the device has already had an impact on Jim Smerdon, a Vancouver man who has been living with Parkinson’s for more than a decade.
Smerdon said he believes the Tele-Empathy Device could increase the amount of empathy in caregivers, families and friends, which will lead to greater understanding and better care.
“For caregivers, I think it will be revolutionary,” Smerdon said in an interview.
Smerdon has seen two people close to him experience his tremors: his wife Deana Grinnell and his identical twin brother Pat, who doesn’t have Parkinson’s. The first person Smerdon saw displaying his tremors was his wife. He was surprised by her reaction.
“It was very uncomfortable for me to see that because she’s my caregiver,” Smerdon said.
For Grinnell, experiencing her husband’s tremors was “quite phenomenal.”
“My hand started to tremor and twist involuntary and in a pattern that I recognized because I know Jim’s tremor so well,” she said. “I was like: ‘That’s Jim’s tremor! In my arm!’ ”
While wearing the arm band prototype, they put her through a series of basic movements that included writing with a pen and sticking a straw into a drink box. Grinnell said her initial reaction was in part coloured by the distracting experience of feeling an electrical current in her arm, which she compared to sticking your finger in a light socket.
In the following weeks, she found her empathy growing as she saw her husband struggle with everyday tasks such as making dinner and buttoning a shirt.
“I have a different appreciation now for what he is going through,” she said.
“When you understand that, you certainly do have more empathy. I think I’m patient, but you grow another level of patience.”
Smerdon said seeing his brother Pat wear the Tele-Empathy Device and display his tremors was much different than seeing his wife with his tremors.
“For my brother, it was more fascinating: He can take care of himself,” Jim Smerdon said. “It was more unsettling for me to see (my wife) with my tremors than to see my brother with my tremors.”
(On May 28, Smerdon is organizing a fundraiser for Parkinson Society B.C. Full Throttle is a motorcycle ride and car rally from Vancouver to Whistler.)
The Tele-Empathy Device records the electrical activity of muscles in the form of an electromyogram of the patient and transmits it via Bluetooth. The data is received in a custom-engineered armband worn by the non-patient.
Yan Fossat, vice-president of Klick Labs, said from Toronto that the device creates a feeling of empathy in another person.
“Typically, empathy is a personality trait. It’s sort of like learning a language — it is a lot of work. Some people are good at it, some people aren’t,” he said. “This device kind of injects it in you and suddenly you feel what the patient feels, without having to do much effort. ”
The intended audience is physicians, nurses and caregivers, but there could be other uses for the device such as teaching dance.
“I’ve taken dance classes and I’m in a category of people who will never get it,” Fossat said. “If I could wear a device on my legs and do the moves that the teacher is doing, maybe I would get it.”
Other potential uses include transmission of symptoms for diabetes and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Tele-Empathy Device is at what is called the “proof of concept” phase with a working prototype.
Klick Labs is designing a scientific study to test the device on a group of physicians to see how much it increases empathy. The device’s therapeutic benefit would be a side-effect of increasing empathy in physicians.
Fossat wouldn’t say how much it cost to develop the Tele-Empathy Device as the company is private and doesn’t release financial information.