Atentiv have developed, and are currently testing, a treatment for ADHD in children that uses an adventure game running on a tablet combined with a special headset that monitors their attention, inhibition, and self-regulatory control. The curriculum of 13 Cognitive Skills are personally tailored and virtually delivered to a patient-centered Collaborative Care Team.
The headset uses forehead and mastoid sensors to detect brain activity, and that is measured by the software on the tablet to ensure the child is paying attention to the game, and the gameplay automatically adjusts.
Atentiv asked us to design and make a limited run of headsets for their clinical trial.
Children’s heads vary a lot in the age range (8 to 12) that Atentiv devices can help, so from the start we knew that the headset would need to have a lot of adjustment built into it, and be flexible to get a good contact on the sensor pads. The design had to appeal to children, and not look like a medical device, if they were to want to use it.
Using 3D scans of heads we tested multiple designs for fit and alignment before we had the features we felt confident would meet all the requirements. To have maximum adjustability we used flexible, thin walled moldings, combined with pivoting features and slides.
Working closely with our Electronic Engineering partner, we designed a circuit board that would be as compact as possible so as to keep the unit lightweight and visually appealing. The industrial design was made to look like a headpiece that would be worn by a character in a computer game, and the characters in the game were made so they had a similar headpiece.
Initial prototypes were 3D printed in-house so we could rapidly test them with a range of potential users. We refined the design a lot in this phase, trying different slides, retaining features and pads.
For an initial run of 100 parts for clinical trials we again used 3D printed parts, but this time using HP Multi Jet Fusion from ProtoLabs, and assembled and tested everything in house, including all the cabling and replaceable contact pads which we sewed together on our programmable electronic pattern sewing machine.
Initial trials look very promising, and we are continuing to develop the headset with Atentiv.
