Ever since 2011, Proto Labs, a company specializing in efficient production of injection-molded parts, hosts an annual “Cool Idea!” contest. This year, the company awarded Compliant Games a manufacturing grant up to $250,000 for their innovative product, which uses video games to enhance the effectiveness of respiratory therapy systems.
Founder of Compliant Games, Shane Luttrell developed the idea in response to concerns that while spirometry devices helped to inhibit the spread of pneumonia, most patients rarely utilized them.
Basically, Compliant Games gives patients the opportunity to watch a series of interactive video games on an electronic tablet, such as an iPad. Throughout the video game exercises, patients are directed to breathe into an air tube that transmits data back into the game program. This cooperative learning technique effectively teaches patients how to correctly performing breathing techniques.
Upon engagement, information collected from the gaming sessions converts into wireless transmission and monitoring tools to be reviewed by clinicians and doctors alike.
Luttrell claims that Compliant Games developers are excited to use the newly acquired grant award to devise customized injection molded airway tube prototypes that will pass regulatory requirements set forth by institutional review panels. He was recently quoted in a Business Wire article emphasizing that “injection molded are actually a very big deal to us.”
Right now, the Compliance Games respiratory therapy system is basically composed of four major parts: Airline, a hardware adapter that aids the air tube functionality; the DragonKeeper video game program; ClinicBox, a data storage and analytics mechanism; and the AirRN mobile app. Although Compliance Games intends to publicly introduce their new product in the second half of 2016, clinical studies are slated to start as early as late 2015.
So far, the Proto Labs’ Cool Idea! Award has contributed over $1 million in grants to help inventive product concepts reach their real world potential. Last year’s award recipients included AMPY, Roambotics, and the Thruster-100.
