Students from Panjab University have developed a unique type of gloves that will help to detect and diagnose early complications in hand and finger joints. The invention has been granted a seed-funding of Rs 4 lakh by the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) for upgrading it into a start-up.

A team of students from the Design Innovation Centre at the University Institute of Engineering and Technology (UIET), Panjab University have invented the IoT device over a period of three years. They were mentored by Dr Prashant Jindal and Dr Mamta Juneja.

According to Dr Jindal, the device was designed and fabricated within the lab at UIET in consultation with physicians. It seeks to provide valuable information about the movement of fingers, joints of a human hand or fingers, gripping capacity and force to physiotherapists, orthopaedics and surgeons. This will help in the early detection and diagnosis of various disorders that lead to loss of strength in joints, nerves and muscles.

"This glove is aesthetic, comfortable, user friendly and enabled to show user's real-time data as well as progressive recovery graphs for any time period through a mobile app. A treating physician can therefore monitor and advise the patient remotely while the patient uses this glove at his/her home. This device is IoT enabled which is its novelty apart from the design and is useful for real-time and remote sense monitoring," Jindal said. These features will be beneficial for patients as they wouldn't need to make a visit to a physician for consultation. Dr Mamta Juneja said that the invention has been granted a seed-funding of Rs 4 lakh by AICTE for upgrading it into a start-up.