New Delhi, Dec 4 (IANS): In an aim to help specially-abled and elderly people, the Department of Science and Technology (DST) has introduced various affordable assistive tools and techniques for making health care facilities and services inclusive and accessible for their ease of living, particularly to mitigate the impact of Covid-19.
Hand-held spirometer, a hand-held device developed by the Disha Institute of Management and Technology, Raipur, for conducting Pulmonary Function Test (PFT) on people suffering from respiratory diseases, can help disabled and elderly people to record their own data on various stages of lung function easily to doctors for medication advice. This will be helpful for conditions of diseases like Covid-19, COPD, asthma, and can be ascertained and monitored remotely.
The spirometry test with the proposed device provides various lung parameters which are required for estimation of the lung condition. With a graphical user interface module with a computer and printer, the device is lightweight, portable, cost-effective, and simple to operate.
Hand Sanitisation Scrub for Divyangjan, an automatic hand sanitisation scrub for specially-abled, has been developed by the PSG Institute of Technology, Coimbatore. It automatically dispenses sanitiser liquid and scrubs it over the palm and fingers so that the complete hand is disinfected.
The hand sanitiser dispenser cum scrubber, now available for use in the market, is suitable to specially-abled under situations where hand basins or sinks may be physically inaccessible, or a person may have physical difficulty rubbing their hands together thoroughly like persons with a physical disability, leprosy, intellectual disabilities and so on.
e-Tool to create awareness and impart health and hygiene developed by Rajalakshmi Engineering College, Chennai, helps to overcome the loneliness of the persons with intellectual disabilities due to the Covid-19 pandemic. This will help the persons with intellectual disabilities to learn with fun through tabs and mobiles. The e-Tool can also be converted to other vernacular languages, and the Beta Version of the e-tool is used by 200 specially-abled children.
Apart from this, a wearable rehabilitation band with real-time monitoring and feedback of recovery process developed for elderly with motor function disabilities will help the elderly to get quantified outcomes regarding the improvement in muscle strength, muscle flexibility, and muscle endurance during the course of rehabilitation, without direct and physical interventions from doctors and physiotherapists.