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

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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.