Accelerate the pre-competitive development of an eating assistive device for people living with movement disorder - Phase I

该项目的目的是加快为患有运动障碍的人开发辅助进食设备的竞争前开发。能够在没有照顾者的帮助下进食是实现自主的重要一步，在照顾者稀缺的情况下也至关重要。不幸的是，许多患有运动障碍的人没有这个机会。这确实是非常困难的（很大的努力，不舒服，洒了很多食物），甚至不可能让他们吃自主。这些运动障碍在不同程度上与诊断有关，例如脑瘫、肌营养不良、脊髓损伤、帕金森病、共济失调、ALS和中风。在一项市场研究中，Raymond-Chabot-Grant-Thornton（RCGT）估计，该提案中所提出的技术在加拿大的市场规模在114494人和755175人之间，仅在加拿大，潜在收入为114，494，000美元和755，175，000美元，价格为1000美元。人口老龄化给这种情况带来了更大的压力，因为我们将不得不照顾更多失去自主权的人，但可用资源更少。虽然已经开发了不同的辅助技术，但RCGT的观察和我们自己的观察表明，目前没有任何设备能够满足患有运动障碍的人的需求，因为它们缺乏功能或过于昂贵。因此，我们的跨学科团队使用以用户为中心的开发方法开发了一种创新的机械解决方案，并与潜在用户和职业治疗师一起迭代设计了原型。该项目的目标是促进技术创新，以吸引早期投资，以期将技术转让给一家将制造和销售该产品的加拿大公司。该项目将集中在三个主要方面：1）被职业治疗师和用户认为是原始的功能，2）工业设计，以优化设计并提高可负担性（辅助技术领域潜在合作伙伴的主要关注点），3）工业设计，以提高社会对技术的接受度。

The aim of this project is to accelerate the pre-competitive development of an assistive eating device for people living with movement disorders. Being able to eat without the assistance of a caregiver is an important step towards autonomy and critical in the context of scarcity of caregivers. Unfortunately, many people living with movement disorders do not have this opportunity. It is indeed very difficult (great effort, not comfortable, spill a lot of food) or even impossible for them to eat autonomously. These movement disorders are linked at different degree to diagnosis such as cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy, spinal cord injury, Parkinson's disease, ataxia, ALS and stroke. Within a market study, Raymond-Chabot-Grant-Thornton (RCGT), has estimated the market size in Canada for the proposed technology in this proposal between 114 494 and 755 175 people, leading to a potential revenue from $114,494,000 and 755,175,000$ with a $1000 price tag, for Canada only. The ageing of the population creates more stresses for this situation since we will have to take care of more people losing autonomy but with fewer active resources. While different assistive technologies have been developed, RCGT observations and our own have shown that no devices currently meet the needs of people living with movement disorders either because they lack in functionality or because they are too expensive. Our interdisciplinary team has thus developed an innovative mechanical solution using a user-centered development methodology and iteratively designed the prototype together with potential users and occupational therapists. The objective of this project is to foster technology innovation in order to attract early-stage investment in anticipation of transferring the technology to an established Canadian company that will manufacture and sell the product. The project will focus on three main aspects: 1) features that were considered primordial by occupational therapists and users, 2) industrial design to optimize the design and improve affordability (major concern for potential partners in the field of assistive technology), 3) industrial design to improve the social acceptance of the technology.