Two engineers and a Harvard Medical School student have teamed up to enhance the human capabilities of touch with a robotic sensor glove. The glove could take the potential of a diagnosis altering physical exam and put it into the hands of patients.
Its primary goal, they say, is to bring the glove into medical schools, teaching students to improve their examination skills. If that goes well, the team hopes to get the glove into physicians’ hands.
Eventually, a consumer-friendly version could be used for home breast cancer screenings to help determine if a lump requires a doctor appointment for further diagnosis.
The glove quantifies and transmits all the information it gathers from an exam to another device. The researchers believe that the technology can be expanded far beyond its original intended use and could potentially be used to detect enlarged lymph nodes, assess abdominal pain, to examine heart abnormalities, and more.
