DOCTORS’ Notes
patients as people,” says Cynthia Peng,
a fourth-year medical student who plays
music for patients as part of another
program, Healing Through Harmony
(see Health Discoveries, Winter 2019). “At
the fundamental basis, that’s what we do.”
Brown Students at the Bedside is
in place at Rhode Island Hospital, The
Miriam Hospital, and HopeHealth
Hospice. When a patient is admitted and
a member of the medical team notices
they have no one with them, they ask if
the patient would like a student visitor.
If they say yes, the team recruits a
medical student.
While some patients wish to talk,
others prefer to simply sit with someone.
“I visited an agitated elderly woman with
dementia who was hard of hearing,”
second-year med student Dan Kraft says.
“Instead of talking, we just sat together
and watched TV. Whenever she didn’t
understand what was happening, I would
help her out. It was my presence that was
important there, not the conversation.”
Kraft says her care team told him that
after he left, her agitation had signifi-
cantly decreased. “Sometimes agitation
is a sign of suffering,” he adds. “If we can
ease that pain, that’s useful for both the
patient and the entire medical team.”
The program benefits not only patients
but medical students as well. “At the early
stages in medical school, to sit down and
to really interact and get to know who
a patient is, what they value, if they’re
suffering and lonely, is important,” says
Fred Schiffman, MD, the Sigal Family
Professor of Humanistic Medicine at the
Warren Alpert Medical School. “To just
be able to reach down to patients’ human
core is something very special for
students and patients alike.”
As the program grows, the leadership
team, which includes medical students,
residents, and faculty advisers, hopes to
ensure all hospital patients have
someone to visit them.
“The act of talking to someone is a
beautiful and simple thing,” Peng says.
“Having that humanistic touch and
reminding people of this fundamental
truth—that we treat the patient first—is
so important for trainees.”
4 HEALTH DISCOVERIES l WINTER 2020
Hope in a Glove
Wearable technology may help doctors monitor Parkinson’s
patients and improve their care. BY NEIL NACHBAR
R
hode Island researchers are developing a “smart glove” that they say
could help patients with Parkinson’s disease.
The glove, which can collect data based on the movements of those living
with Parkinson’s and other movement disorders, is being developed by
Kunal Mankodiya, PhD, an associate professor of engineering at the University of Rhode
Island, and Umer Akbar, MD, an associate professor of neurology at the Warren Alpert
Medical School.
Akbar, who has worked with
Mankodiya on a couple of other
projects, specializes in caring
for patients with Parkinson’s
disease.
“The challenge with studying
the many symptoms of the
disease is that they fluctuate
throughout the day,” says
Akbar, the co-director of the
Movement Disorders Program
and the Deep Brain Stimulation
URI doctoral student Nick Constant, left, and Professor
Kunal Mankodiya model the smart gloves they’re developing
Program at Rhode Island
to treat patients with Parkinson’s.
Hospital. “The short window
physicians have into their patients’ lives is often inadequate to verify the symptoms, so
we sought to develop wearable technology that can remotely and objectively provide
clinical data, which can help us better treat our patients.”
The researchers will conduct a pilot study of 20 to 30 Parkinson’s patients in Mankodi-
ya’s lab, at Rhode Island Hospital, and with the gloves being worn in the patients’ homes.
Mankodiya received a two-year, $249,977 grant from the National Science Foundation
to further develop the glove. The researchers say the data from the glove will help
doctors make informed decisions on the type of exercises patients should perform and
the medications to prescribe.
“This funding will enable us to take a deep dive into the world of fusing different
domains, including conductive fabrics, wearable electronics, human-factors design, and
smart textile manufacturing,” Mankodiya says. The grant will also help them transition
the project from research to the market, which “will require very focused, narrow
research to finalize the physical, digital, and analytical components of the smart gloves.”
Nearly 930,000 people in the US have Parkinson’s disease, according to the Parkin-
son’s Foundation, with the number projected to increase to 1.2 million by 2030.
Andrea Hopkins was diagnosed with the disease in 2002. She’s tested smart gloves in
the researchers’ lab for a few years and is looking forward to the next phase of the project.
“There is no cure for Parkinson’s disease, but if doctors can monitor their patients
remotely using the smart glove, it would enable them to assess how the medications are
working and then make adjustments if necessary,” Hopkins says. “This could also
eliminate the need for a follow-up appointment, saving the patient and the doctor time.”