iShoe by MIT Student May Save Thousands of Senior
Citizens from Deadly Falls
Future versions could help correct problems by
providing sensory stimulation to the feet when the wearer is off-kilter
Graduate student Erez Lieberman is
working on an "iShoe" which uses technology developed by NASA to
create an insole that could help elderly people keep their
balance and prevent falls. Photo / Donna Coveney
August 1, 2008 The lives of thousands of senior
citizens may be saved by an MIT graduate students invention. His iShoe
insole could help doctors detect balance problems in older people before
a catastrophic fall. It was recently reported that falls caused
thousands of senior citizen deaths in 2005.
But when Erez Lieberman, the graduate student in
the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, developed
the devise to detect balance problems, he was not thinking about the
elderly. He was an intern at NASA trying to work on new ideas for
astronauts..
In 2005, nearly 300,000 Americans suffered hip
fractures after a fall, and an average of 24 percent of hip-fracture
patients aged 50 and over die in the year following their fracture,
according to the National Osteoporosis Foundation.
Traumatic brain injuries due to falls caused nearly
8,000 deaths and 56,000 hospitalizations in 2005 among Americans 65 and
older, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention released in June.
Lieberman is now testing the iShoe technology in a
small group of patients. The current model is equipped to diagnose
balance problems, but future versions could help correct such problems,
by providing sensory stimulation to the feet when the wearer is
off-kilter.
"By doing that we can replace the sense and thus
improve people's balance," Lieberman says.
Lieberman and other iShoe team members have applied
for a patent on the technology, to be jointly held by MIT, Harvard and
NASA. In April, the company won a $50,000 grant from the Lunar Ventures
Competition to help with start-up costs.
Lieberman originally developed the technology to
help NASA monitor balance problems in astronauts returning from space.
The iShoe insole would measure and
analyze the pressure distribution of the patient's foot and
report back to their doctor. Photo / Donna Coveney
Zero gravity environments wreak havoc on the
vestibular system, one of three body systems that control balance. (The
others are vision and sensory receptors called proprioceptors, which
tell you where your body parts are in relation to other body parts and
the outside world.)
"The change in gravity really screws with their
sense of balance. They're falling all over the place," says Lieberman,
who is a Hertz Fellow and also receives funding from the National
Science Foundation and Department of Defense.
The effect usually lasts about 10 days, but NASA
tests astronauts' balance for 16 days after their return. Astronauts go
into a phone-booth-like box, where they undergo a series of balance
tests such as platform shifts and wall shifts.
While at NASA, Lieberman developed a new system for
gathering data and an algorithm to analyze the data.
"We've developed the first algorithm that is really
capable of not just looking at the pressure distribution of
proprioceptors on the feet but also analyzing what that's saying," he
says.
Lieberman soon realized that the technology could
reach a wider audience than just astronauts. His own grandmother
suffered a bad fall several years ago, and he theorized that a balance
diagnostic could help doctors catch balance problems before such a fall
occurs.
"You have a gradual progression of loss of balance,
osteoporosis, and other factors that can lead to the fall," Lieberman
says.
The iShoe insole would measure and analyze the
pressure distribution of the patient's foot and report back to their
doctor. The device could also be outfitted with an alarm that would
alert family members when a fall has occurred.
Lieberman and his colleagues are now testing the
device in about 60 people, hoping to generate data that will help them
create a model to predict the risk of a fall.
Other members of the iShoe team are Katherine
Forth, a former NASA postdoctoral associate; Ricardo Piedrahita, a
graduate of University of California at San Diego; and Qian Yang, a
Harvard undergraduate.
Editor's Notes:
>> Original report by Anne Trafton,
News Office, MIT
