It's one thing to give stuffed animals to Alzheimer's and dementia patients who need soothing. It's another thing to design "smart" stuffed animals with therapeutic capabilities.

Kristopher Sturgis

What could be so complicated about a stuffed animal that provides comfort for patients suffering from Alzheimer's and dementia? It's actually more complex than you might think.

Just ask University of Illinois engineering student Fiona Kalensky and her colleagues about the various iterations of their Therapalz artificial companion animals. Their latest prototype is the result of months of research and collaboration with patients and caregivers that provided continuous feedback and ideas on how to improve the technology.

"Early on, we partnered with an adult day care facility and spent six months researching, attending support group sessions, interviewing, and observing home caregivers and their loved ones," she said. "Each insight was jotted down onto a Post-it over the course of that time. One interview in particular we had the pleasure of meeting with a woman and her husband, who has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's five years earlier. Throughout the duration of the interview, he would become agitated and begin to wander. It wasn't until their dog came into the room and hopped on his lap that we noticed a change in his mood and he instantly began to pet the dog. After this, we began to examine how we could mimic animal therapy to recreate the same sensations and benefits of a live animal to provide a tool for caregivers."

The Therapalz, for example, have a constant heartbeat. They can also detect touch, responding to it with a vibration or a purr. The whole idea is to have a more affordable alternative to keeping live animals onsite, or using medications to calm patients. 

Kalensky and her colleagues realized the value early on of partnering with a nursing home facility to foster a partnership with both patients and caregivers. This collaboration would allow them to interact with the technology and provide feedback and insights that would help Kalensky and her colleagues to improve the therapeutic aspects of the companion animals.

"Therapalz has been designed and developed alongside caregivers for this purpose," Kalensky says. "After we built our initial prototype, we brought it to a caregiver support group and a nursing home for feedback. We observed how individuals were using it, and gathered information regarding features. Each visit that we did, we would reiterate our design incorporating the feedback we received, and we will continue to do this as we work towards finalizing our prototype."

Therapalz initially began as a human centered design project through Design for America, a national program that aims to encourage students to fuse collaboration, innovation, and creativity. The project soon turned into a new startup opportunity for Kalensky, and eventually led her to change her major from biology to systems engineering so she could gain a better understanding of the technology behind how things work.

"The intersection between engineering and healthcare is very fascinating, but has also been very challenging when it comes to designing within the space established by parameters," she says. "I'm a big believer in quick and easy prototyping. For example, initially we were exploring the addition of subtle heat to the therapal. Our first mock up prototype of this consisted of a stuffed animal with some hand warmers placed inside, but we found that individuals with Alzheimer's struggle to regulate their own body temperature. We then incorporated heat into our circuit but ran into technical challenges with power--so we had to get creative and use materials in the stuffing of the animal to capture natural body heat from the individual, which ultimately makes for a pleasant and calming experience for our users."

Kalensky says that through the entire process, meeting and collaborating with users has been the most rewarding part of the whole experience. She says that engaging with users and listening to their feedback has become such a crucial part of the equation when it comes to integrating technology into healthcare solutions.

"The ability to listen, empathize, and interact with your users and stakeholders is what leads to an impactful product," she says. "Two years ago, we began by listening to and collecting stories from caregivers and their loved ones with Alzheimer's. Over the course of developing Therapalz, I have watched some of these individuals make the difficult transition from at home care to nursing homes and hospice. These were the individuals and caregivers that continually contributed to the development of Therapalz and worked alongside us as we reiterated our design. I am constantly being re-inspired by the interactions that I have with caregivers and the validation that we receive."

As Kalensky and her colleagues move forward with the device, she says they plan to extend additional features to the technology in an effort to create a therapeutic device that can reach other patients and broaden its impact.

"We are currently in the process of building out additional features and then plan to finalize our design," she says. "We envision Therapalz to be a therapeutic platform that can create an overall calming experience for our users through tactile stimulation and sound. We have been exploring the possible benefits that Therapalz could provide for additional user groups such as children with autism, Asperger syndrome, and individuals coping with depression."

Kristopher Sturgis is a contributor to Qmed.

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