MIT class project turns into an FDA-cleared treatment for tremors

Any experience in applying the device to tremors caused by other issues?

I’m curious to know why they had to “choose a disease” for the market tests. some treatments are symptomatic and don’t need to select the exact disease they are going to market for.

In general I would not recommend driving a motor (even a small one) directly with a microcontroller GPIO pin. Those pins aren't designed to sink much current and you'll at best get a very weak response, because although the MCU is 3V that's only going to be maintained with negligible load on the pin. At worst flyback may destroy your microcontroller because the motor is an inductor and will cause a reverse voltage spike when turned off.

A slightly more robust approach that costs just a few pennies more is to use a BJT (i.e. an NPN transistor) to drive the motor and add a flyback diode (a reverse biased diode across the motor's windings) and a little .1uf capacitor.

You could also use a FET to drive it. Just be aware most common ones don't fully turn on at 3V gate voltage and will still present a significant resistance in the circuit which is why I would probably use a BJT.

The treatment was very effective. She went from not being able to eat soup without making a mess and barely being able to use touch screens (let alone write) to no visibly noticeable tremor. They had her draw a before and after spiral and it was an amazing improvement.

But the side effects were rough. She had trouble walking for weeks after the first treatment, though it eventually resolved with time and physical therapy. She had speech (cadence, slurring, word-finding) issues after the second treatment that she's currently doing therapy for.

It was a really big quality of life improvement for her but I don't know if she would have done it if she were not retired or didn't have a strong family support network.

https://padiracinnovation.org/News/2024/07/the-hexosamine-bi...

I think you may be confused, or are repeating something you heard in a Netflix documentary.

First, “fda cleared” means your device is “substantially equivalent” to another cleared or granted device. You can’t be cleared based on another approved device, since approval means the other device received a PMA. Second, substantial equivalence is actually quite lenient. I know, because I’ve helped clear over 50 devices.

Finally, a cleared device still can require a lot of testing. Frequently FDA requires our clients to run multimillion dollar studies to validate their devices.

Demo wasn’t a trial

Like the snake oil glasses for color-blindness, we can probably prevent them from making marketing claims now that we know they don’t work, but I don’t think forcing them to go through a drug market approval is necessary, the risk is not high enough.

The first digit is the school that offers it, then after the decimal point they have their number of classes. (EECS is unusual in that it has four digits after the decimal point, most every other course has just three.) In general, classes that are required start with 001 and increment up, such that 001 is the intro course, 002 follows from that, etc. Then electives start around 015 or so.

Course 1 is Civil Engineering, Course 2 is Mechanical engineering, Course 3 is materials science, etc. 6 is Electrical and Computer engineering.

So 2.009 is a mechanical engineering course, in this case one for students towards the end of their time. It's called Product Engineering Processes, where you create a new product from beginning to production.