Grant: Engage Grants Program

Doctor's Orders Inc. is a high tech company based in Fredericton, New Brunswick. It is developing a Smart Cane system to monitor how it is used and to better inform health care and related interventions. Their technology relies on pressure sensitive materials. The Smart Cane system uses pressure sensitive material to measure pressure and force. The data is logged on a cloud based server that is available to health care provider to monitor each person. Variations in collected response can be a symptom of a greater issue, catching them early can change senior's health care from reactive to proactive reducing the economic burden on the health care system. The current pressure sensitive material that they use is expensive to implement and does not capture all of the data points of interest. The company requires novel, pressure-sensitive materials that are more economic. It is ideal if the process to make them is green as well. Another property that would be good to have is the possibility of pressure and torque mapping. These properties would allow Smart Cane to more accurately measure pressure and torque in real time, thereby allowing corrective feedback in the form a digital read out on the server to facilitate postural adjustments which can be communicated with the user. This project will develop new polymer-based composites as sensors that can address this need. Dr. Ghandi has expertise in Material Science, Physical, Green and Free Radical Chemistry. These expertise will be used to further develop green processes to make cost effective novel polymer based material for use in Smart Cane system.