Do doctors need a shot of empathy? Researchers at a Canadian digital healthcare marketing company think so, and say they can administer it wirelessly.
Klick Labs, a part of Toronto-based Klick Health, has developed the SymPulse Tele-Empathy Device, which induces the tremors and involuntary movements of Parkinson’s patients in non-patients.
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The researchers approached Parkinson’s using the concept of disease as a filter that disrupts data. They digitized normal and abnormal (contracted) muscle activity from electromyograms and analyzed it using the types of signals found in engineering, physics or audio recording.
They then converted the muscle activity, which is analog and noisy, into computerized signals that pass via Bluetooth to electrodes, and through the skin. When a non-patient receives that voltage, their muscle contracts and either has a tremor or moves involuntarily, according to Yan Fossat, vice president of Klick Labs.
A video on the company’s website shows a patient’s twin brother and wife experiencing his tremor and dystonia for the first time. In testing on about 100 non-patients, most could only tolerate one to two minutes of these muscle contractions. You could see the empathy in their eyes as they experienced the patient’s symptoms, Fossat said in a phone interview.
Although he hasn’t run across any similar or overlapping technology, Fossat did see a device that sends electrical impulses to the larynx to induce stuttering. Japanese researchers showcased the Stacha Stuttering Experience Device at SXSW. Their project seeks to change the way society sees speech impediment, according to their website.
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SymPulse is in proof-of-concept stage, and Klick would likely market it as a research process rather than as a device, Fossat said. Potential customers could include hospitals and healthcare systems. Fossat envisions it as a tool to increase empathy in doctors, nurses, family members and other caregivers.
Beyond empathy, Fossat foresees SymPulse working as a telemedicine tool to enable patients to remotely transmit symptoms so that physicians can come to more accurate diagnoses than they do by asking questions or watching a video. SymPulse might even transmit treatment by allowing physicians to feel how patients respond to different medications, he added.
The company also envisions using the device to boost empathy for patients with other diseases, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Physicians and caregivers would feel the effects of restricted airflow and poor blood oxygen concentration.
“We’ve done some tests on that, and it’s very effective at making you feel how very horrendous COPD is,” Fossat said in a phone interview.
First, though, Klick Labs wants to see if SymPulse can work as an “empathy booster shot” that would last six months to a year.
SymPulse represents “a very real and tangible way to share a patient experience,” said Dr. Samuel Frank, an instructor of neurology at Harvard Medical School and a member of the American Academy of Neurology. Frank, who is not affiliated with Klick Labs, likened it to the simulations of situations and procedures that students experience in medical school.
“This is taking a small piece of that and taking it outside the simulation room and placing it in the real world,” he said in a phone interview. “I would hope that physicians have the capacity to be empathetic already. That’s part of the reason that they go into medicine, but I think that this allows for a deeper understanding.”
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