News

UW Together – Featured Project

Keshia Media, News, Orthoses, Projects

Here at the Ability & Innovation Lab we are fortunate to partner with amazing families and people who are our user experts for feedback and ideas when creating new devices and designs. Jayna and her family are fantastic partners in the design project for Jayna, alongside our undergraduate students. The second prototype is now underway to improve the comfort, donning and doffing, and applicability of Jayna’s elbow-driven device to enable the use of her left arm during two handed tasks.

UW Together presents Jayna’s story HERE.

Jayna and Bradley work on bi-manual tasks (two-handed) during Jayna's visit to the Ability and Innovation Lab

ME Capstone Project Awarded Grant for Pediatric Medical Device Innovation

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A UW Mechanical Engineering capstone team‘s project has been awarded a grant to continue the development of a pediatric exoskeleton. The team collaborated with physical therapists at Seattle Children’s Hospital to develop their prototype and entered into the 2016 Target Challenge grant competition.

New England Pediatric Device Consortium (NEPDC) and the Center for Translation of Rehabilitation Engineering Advances and Technology (TREAT) Award $150K between four  Medical Device Innovator teams.

We are pleased to announce Jessica Zistasis, a member of the capstone team, will join our lab to pursue this project and further its development for her MS.

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Kat Steele is highlighted in the Puget Sound Business Journal

Keshia Media, News

A portrait of Dr. Kat Steele.Our director of the Human Ability and Engineering Lab, Kat Steele, is highlighted in the Puget Sound Business Journal. Below a blurb from the article can be read, but to read in full, follow this LINK.

People in Research: How Kat Steele applied her engineering roots to health care

“Mechanical engineering is so flexible that you can work from aerospace to medicine,” she explained. “Prosthetic limbs, joint replacements…all those devices they are developing now for health care have a lot of mechanical engineering in their roots.”

Now at the UW, Steele is the director of the Human Ability & Engineering Lab where she and her team focus on need-based human-centered designs, mainly for people with cerebral palsy, spinal cord injuries or those who have had a stroke.

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Can Technology Make a Difference in Pediatric Rehabilitation? – A NCMRR Webcast

Keshia AccessEngineering, News, Outreach, Projects, UbiquitousRehabilitation

Interested in how technology can be used to make a difference in pediatric rehabilitation? A video cast from the National Center for Medical Rehabilitation Research (NCMRR) discusses the topic in Bethesda MD. The workshop is organized by the Motion Analysis Laboratory and supported by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.

The workshop on August 9th, 2016 brought together a group of experts in rehabilitation to discuss how technology can help us to address pressing needs in pediatric rehabilitation. To follow all of the talks this past week and listen to “Can Technology Make a Difference in Pediatric Rehabilitation?”, follow this link, CLICK HERE.