The MusicGlove: A Unique Hand Therapy Device For Stroke Rehabilitation

I was laid off from my regular job in August 2012 and two months later I was able to get a part time job (up to 40hrs/wk) as a patient sitter at South Texas Rehabilitation Hospital in Brownsville,TX.  My job was to monitor the patients, assist the nursing staff, and help the patients who had suffered a stroke or came out of invasive surgery to prevent them from falling to the floor and avoid any further injury that would revert their recovery.   I would work 12 hour shifts there. Sometimes I've had to watch up to three patients at a time. Some patients had family and friends visit while others were totally alone.  I believe the goal of recovery is a great battle to fight and not an easy one to win.  I've bumped into another website that may be of great interest to stroke victims, families of stroke victims, and rehabilitation centers in adding a new tool to this fight.  You may learn about the research of The Music Glove and the application for the recovery of hand motor skills at http://www.musicglove.com/research/ .

Here is also a quick abstract on the product below :

People with stroke typically must perform much of their hand exercise at home without professional assistance as soon as two weeks after the stroke. Without feedback and encouragement, individuals often lose motivation to practice using the affected hand, and this disuse contributes to further declines in hand function. We developed the MusicGlove as a way to facilitate and motivate at home practice of hand movement. This low-cost device uses music as an interactive and motivating medium to guide hand exercise and to quantitatively assess hand movement recovery. It requires the user to practice functional movements, including pincer grip,key-pinch grip, and finger-thumb opposition, by using those movements to play different musical notes, played along to songs displayed by an interactive computer game.  We found the glove is well suited by people with moderate hand impairment for regaining their lost ability.