People suffering from severe disabilities have problems to communicate via the normally available channels (voice, writing, signs) due to motor degeneration or brain damage. Those problems to communicate, decrease their autonomy, independence and other daily life activities.
As disabled people have specific requirements for their home environment and its functionalities, their demands increase and change with growing age - especially when their health status starts to worsen- and they experience the evolution of the impairment. An important aspect for all people having the need to be supported in their daily-life-activities is to remain integrated into social life despite their age and existing disabilities
Specifically we are addressing the following points:
• Technological void for most locked-in patients, those who cannot use eye-tracking systems or other assistive technologies available on the market.
• Lack of personalized and adaptive interfaces meeting user’s needs, which change in the undetermined-unknown way as the disease evolves.
• Lack of accurate tools for diagnosis to support physicians, hospitals and national health systems to provide value care services to their patients.
• Lack of tools to support relatives and informal caregivers to attend the patients, improving also their quality of life and working towards improving patient’s social integration and access to digital services.
All the above points have been met during the project period thanks to release of following solutions, all addressed specifically to LIS/CLIS (locked-in) people:
• New BrainControl AAC (communicator) with increased stability and improved user experience, both in BCI as well as Sensory version. The version is already available on the market and used by few patients.
• Software solution (API) to allow people in LIS (locked-in) to pilot a wheelchair: solution presented to 2 wheelchairs producers during 2021.
• BrainControl Avatar, the solution to drive a robotic alter ego in an independent way
• BrainControl Smart, a diagnostic platform containing tests and exercise to perform assessment and rehabilitation in the cognitive and visual ability area
The overall objective is to expand the usage of BrainControl software and solutions to as many people (specifically addressing the ones in Locked-in status or with higher mobility impairment) as possible in order to reduce the gap that the impairment is causing, both for communication, which is definitely vital, as well as for a better mobility and also to give a better instrument to doctors to perform a better diagnosis.
