Back pain remedy by sensor?

Two electrical engineers from the TU Darmstadt have developed a sensor for about 20 euros to prevent back pain. If a deviation from one „ideal“ Position for more than 60 seconds, the device stuck to the back responds with an alarm. Physicians and health insurances should, according to a report of „World Online“ already expressed interest. The electrical engineering students Ghaith Noman and Azam Mahmood came up with the idea of ​​observing a fellow student in a lecture. The person concerned sat in the opinion of the two students in „a bad sitting posture“ and complained of back pain.

Afterwards Mahmood and Noman developed a small device, which „postures that are harmful to the muscles and bones“ corrected with a vibration alarm. Not only physicians and health insurances are said to have registered interest: Companies from the orthopedic industry could also spread the device.

It is interesting that two electrical engineers have succeeded in doing what has not been done for centuries by a physician: namely to find out what the „right one“ or „ideal“ Posture is. That people with scolioses (laterally „bent“ Spine) or in sedentary occupations are often symptom free than people with strong muscles, from the outside as „just“ Perceptible spine or as an athlete is a fact that any manual practitioner can report.

Technology versus biology attractive for health insurances?
„Biological material“ How to assess the human organism from an electro-technical point of view with a sensor in eraser size seems to be the most recent state of science more than absurd. The Darmstädter want to go even further: The device should also provide a GPS chip long-term data, so temporal and local occurrence of „poor posture“ to investigate.

That for the legal coffers a small 20 euros „expensive“ Device, which is supposed to remedy back pain remedy, seems attractive, is understandable. But with the various factors in the human body only to fix the posture and here after millennia the „ideal“ Having found posture is unlikely.

Instead of investing in this market, it seems more appropriate for medical practitioners to integrate effective therapies such as osteopathy or the fascial distortion model into their service catalog. These are becoming increasingly popular, especially in people with back pain who have not benefited from unspecific measures, the cost of which the health insurance companies bear. Until now, insured persons have to bear the costs of these treatments themselves - only people with supplementary insurance or private health insurance are reimbursed in most cases. At about 60-100 euros per treatment (which usually takes 45 minutes to one and a half hours), the costs are rather low compared to, for example, imaging procedures, which often have no therapeutic consequence.

In addition, many people are hardly able to receive prescriptions for physiotherapeutic measures such as manual therapy or mobilization due to the limitation of the health insurance funds. Due to the lower compensation, the physiotherapists have meanwhile almost uniformly arrived nationwide at a 20 minute rhythm in the treatment.

How such an individual effective therapy of back pain is to be guaranteed, seems questionable and is not likely to be solved by the device of Darmstadt students. Next to it, Mahmood leads opposite „World Online“ that a posture that is always corrected by the sensor could also be useful for social events or job interviews. It is to be hoped that such devices, which can differentiate correctly and wrongly, will not be used in neuroscience in the near future. (tf, 25.02.2011)

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