Students’ innovation offers help to people with brain damage

Five ‘gap-year’ students at leading technology company Cambridge Consultants Ltd (CCL) have developed a revolutionary ‘talking pager’ to help people with brain damage. The pager is designed for use by people with memory or organisational difficulties as a result of brain injury, and helps by reminding them to do a variety of tasks and to establish a routine in their everyday life.

The project was undertaken by five CCL technology scholars as part of their vacation work prior to taking up their places at University. They responded to the request to develop this device for the Oliver Zangwill Centre for Neuropsychological Rehabilitation in Ely. The Centre has already developed a successful ‘NeuroPage’ service that sends written messages via a standard pager. Building on this work, the five students were faced with the challenge of incorporating speech into the existing pager system so that it would help those with reading difficulties or visual impairment.

NeuroPage has been proven to be an extremely useful tool in helping patients re-establish a normal lifestyle. Messages sent to the pager can range from reminding a patient to take their medication, pick up children from school, attend an appointment at the hairdressers, or even to hang up the washing – activities that most of us take for granted, yet which can be difficult for those with memory disorders.

In order to produce a working device for the Centre, the students took into account that their device would have to work with existing network providers, have the ability to convert English text directly into speech, and also to use as little power as possible to conserve battery life. In order to meet the technical challenges of this new development the students used a pre-built paging circuit module and then built a voice circuit around it.

Matthew Wallace, who led the project on behalf of the students, commented, "When working on this project we were acutely aware of the valuable role the device plays in a person’s everyday life. As a pager the device is a very socially acceptable accessory that doesn’t mark the person out as suffering from any sort of injury or disorder. By enabling the pager with a speech facility we were conscious that the device still needed to retain an element of discretion when used in public places, such as on a train or in a restaurant. To solve this problem, we built in the facility for an ear piece connector so that only the patient would hear the message."

A further issue the CCL students had to deal with was the clarity of speech delivered from the pager to reduce any possibility of misunderstanding from the patient using the device. To tackle this issue, the students were given a free sample chip from Sequoia Technology Ltd, capable of taking a plain English text input link and, with a minimum of external components, directly drive a speaker with clear, natural-sounding speech.

Dr Andrew Bateman from the Oliver Zangwill Centre commented, "I’m absolutely delighted with the work the CCL technology scholars have done. I receive a phone call every month from a patient who would benefit from the talking pager, as they are unable to read a typical text message. Brain damage can lead some patients to experience either word blindness, or even loss of eyesight. To be able to incorporate speech into this already valuable tool will have a dramatic effect for a number of our patients."

Matthew Wallace concluded, "Clearly this work has the potential to have a major impact on the way a small number of people are able to live their lives. I know that all of us who worked on the project feel that, even before going to University, we have had the opportunity to create a product that has made a real difference. Naturally, we feel a great sense of pride and excitement about what we’ve been doing."

With a working prototype model, the Oliver Zangwill Centre is now keen to hear from any electronic production facilities that would be able to develop a small number of devices on their behalf.

About NeuroPage
NeuroPage is a reminder system that was developed by the father of a young man who suffered a brain injury and the young man’s neuropsychologist. NeuroPage uses radio-paging technology to send reminders of things to do. The individual wears an ordinary pager and reminders are stored on a central computer at the Oliver Zangwill Centre. Individuals using the system send in a list of reminders when they first start using NeuroPage and can then update the list when changes are needed. At the appropriate time, the computer automatically sends the message to the individual’s pager via a paging company. When the message arrives, the pager beeps (or vibrates), one button is pressed and the message can be read from the screen. Because the system is automatic, reminders can be sent out at any time of the day or night.
www.neuropage.nhs.uk

About the Oliver Zangwill Centre
The Oliver Zangwill Centre for Neuropsychological Rehabilitation provides high quality rehabilitation for the individual cognitive, social, emotional and physical needs of people with non-progressive brain injury. We also aim to meet the needs of families of brain injured people. The centre’s ultimate aim is to promote the maximum level of:

• independent functioning in the home and community
• productive work
  

In partnership with clients, families and other services and through our links with the Medical Research Council and the NHS Research & Development Initiative, we seek to apply the latest research findings, evaluate our service and investigate ways to improve neuropsychological rehabilitation.

The Oliver Zangwill Centre is part of East Cambridgeshire and Fenland Primary Care Trust.

www.ozc.nhs.uk

Cambridge Consultants Limited (CCL) designs and develops innovative new products, processes and systems. CCL enables clients to turn business opportunities into commercial successes, whether launching first-to-market products, or expanding existing markets through the introduction of new technologies.

With a team of over 200 engineers and scientists, CCL is able to offer solutions across a diverse range of industries including healthcare, telecoms, industrial and consumer products, automotive and aerospace.

www.CambridgeConsultants.com