Tag: Assistance

A pop-up display could help those with limited vision access the digital world. Meanwhile, a Cologne-based startup is offering the German-speaking deaf community, who also have difficulty reading, a similar opportunity: its avatar renders website content into sign language. Website administrators use an internet platform with a toolbox to arrange pre-defined blocks of text and tailor them to individual...

In Africa, group buying is making fresh produce more affordable. Meanwhile, a new startup in Germany is aiming to provide warm meals to those in financial need, while simultaneously reducing food waste in canteens. Students or those on a tight budget register on the app. After vetting, they can request food each day from a nearby canteen for a...

A frame for endotracheal tubes helps protect patients. Equally important: quickly staunching blood when wounds bleed profusely. Now, a Taiwanese startup is showing how this can be done with biocompatible agents like amino acids. The latter build proteins in the body and assist with the production of enzymes. Using a newly-developed biotechnological method, the team combined amino acid molecules...

Dialysis could soon be significantly less trying. Hospital patients who take regular medication rely heavily on the nursing staff. To unburden both, an Italian startup has created an automatic pill dispenser placed directly by patients’ bedside. The wireless device is controlled through a cloud-based online portal into which electronic medication plans are imported or patient requirements manually entered. There’s...

An app is inspiring children to read books. But as a non-profit organisation in the US has shown, books are also highly valuable in prisons. The organisation’s founder, a former prison resident himself for nine years, discovered how stories and books could provide perspective during his long stay in solitary confinement. In the meantime, the registered lawyer has been...

A smart pen deciphers Braille characters. But participating fully in digital life remains a challenge for those with no or limited vision. Enter a New York-based research team and its sparkling idea. The team’s square display contains 100 evenly arranged circular silicone sheets, each measuring 2mm in diameter. The sheets can be made to pop up within 0.24 milliseconds...

Fungi for healthy feet? No longer a paradox thanks to DIY insoles. Now a research team in Atlanta has invented a smart inner sole to support people with walking problems. Pressure data from each foot is collected thanks to 170 thin, flexible sensors spread across the soles underneath users’ feet. Meaning each step can be analysed to determine whether...

New frames for tubes ensure critical patients can breathe comfortably. Colostomies are used after colorectal surgery, often after cancer. Now a Paris-based startup wants to give those affected the chance to avoid them altogether. The team’s device comprises a stent with an attached film tube and a thin second tube, connected to an external vacuum pump. The stent is...