A Novel Wearable Sensing Device Enabling Remote Palpation

In critical situations, such as in underdeveloped countries, impoverished areas, during pandemics, or in disaster relief efforts, there is an urgent demand for telemedicine to address healthcare delivery challenges. Among the clinical skills used by healthcare professionals, palpation plays a fundamental role in providing valuable information for the diagnosis and treatment of various medical conditions. Therefore, having the capability to perform palpation remotely would be highly advantageous. However, at present, there is a lack of established technologies and methods to facilitate remote palpation in unstructured environments, such as patients’ homes. Moreover, technological complexity can often represent a barrier to the widespread adoption of remote palpation systems.The objective of this work is to foster the adoption of teleconsultation by developing a novel wearable sensing device that enables remote tissue diagnosis through palpation. The device here presented, characterized by a high level of wearability and low technological complexity, is able to reliably measure both the magnitude of the force exerted by the patient’ finger pulp on the tissue and the finger pulp orientation, delivering reliable haptic feedback to the healthcare provider. This was further assessed through an experimental campaign, in which subjects (in the role of the doctor) correctly identified the presence of nodules and detected the presence of anomalies 69.5% and 71.5% of cases, respectively.