The purpose of this project is to design and prototype a device capable of quantitatively measuring muscle strength and muscle mass in pediatric rheumatology patients.

When doctors want to determine your full body health, they need to pull all the tools at their disposal to get to know your body better. But for pediatricians trying to evaluate their patients’ muscle health, there’s difficulty trying to get them to follow directions and getting the right tools.

Currently testing takes place at a clinician’s office where a trained professional arbitrarily measures the patients’ muscle strength against their own. Then they fit them into multi-million-dollar imaging systems like MRI machines to scan and determine muscle mass.

But now with social distancing measures in place, kids who have compromised immune systems cannot regularly visit their doctors. Without access to trained staff, developing a telemedicine protocol is imperative.

Our motivated team is dedicated to finding an innovative solution that brings clinical muscle testing into the household. It will be simple and intuitive to use for kids and their parents. We want to advance strength measurement capabilities and reduce muscle mass measuring costs all under a package that looks like it belongs in a child’s room and not the hospital.