Flexo: A hand-therapy IoT product

In third year of university, as part of the module "Embedded Systems", we were to invent, design and build an Internet of Things product. The main aspects of the project were to:

• correctly gain readings of the sensor data
• send data to MQTT broker
• process and format data
• write efficient and maintainable code
• build an imaginative product
• to market our product efficiently

After an injury or illness, physical therapies can play an important role in the recovery process. According to the latest market research released by Technavio, the global physiotherapy market is projected to grow to USD 18.88 billion by 2021.
While the hour-long therapy sessions each week are the foundation of therapy, the lasting impact depends on continuing lessions learned once a patient is on his own. Statistics show that only 30% of physical therapy patients are fully adherent with their plan of care. Patients are afraid that they will be unable to efficiently perform or keep track of their exercises on their own, resulting in losing motivation to exercise.
Our product, Flexo, aims to improve, track and evaluate patients' performance in their hand therapy treatment plan. Flexo is a hand therapy activity tracker that efficiently measures the patients' performance and injuries by using physical methods and devices such as grips, balls, bankds, stacking cones, and weight bars. It can also be used for acute or chronic pain. Flexo measures:

1. Count: the total number of squeeze-and-release cycles completed with the training.
2. Efficiency: how efficiently are the squeeze-and-release exercises performed on average.
3. Rate: on average, the time taken to ocmplete on squeeze-and-release cycle.

More details on Flexo can be found here