MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Google is throwing its money, brain power and technology at the humble spoon.
But these spoons — don’t call them spoogles — are a bit more than your basic utensil: Using hundreds of algorithms, they allow people with essential tremors and Parkinson’s disease to eat without spilling.
The technology senses how a hand is shaking and makes instant adjustments to stay balanced. In clinical trials, the Liftware spoons reduced shaking of the spoon bowl by an average of 76 percent.
“We want to help people in their daily lives today and hopefully increase understanding of disease in the long run,” Google spokeswoman Katelin Jabbari said.
Other devices have been developed to help people with tremors — rocker knives, weighted utensils, pen grips. But until now, experts say, technology has not been used in this way.
“It’s totally novel,” said Dr. Jill Ostrem, a neurologist at the University of California-San Francisco Medical Center who specializes in movement disorders such as Parkinson’s disease and essential tremors.
She helped advise the inventors and says the device, which has a fork attachment, has been a remarkable asset for some of her patients.
“I have some patients who couldn’t eat independently. They had to be fed. And now they can eat on their own,” she said. “It doesn’t cure the disease — they still have tremor — but it’s a very positive change.”
Google got into the no-shake utensil business in September, acquiring Lift Labs — a small startup funded by the National of Institutes of Health — for an undisclosed sum.
More than 10 million people worldwide, including the mother of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, have essential tremors or Parkinson’s disease. Brin has said he also has a mutation associated with higher rates of Parkinson’s and has donated more than $50 million to research for a cure. But the Lift Labs acquisition was not related, Jabbari said.
Lift Lab founder Anupam Pathak said moving from a small, four-person startup in San Francisco to the vast Google campus in Mountain View has freed him up to be more creative.
Pathak said they also hope to add sensors to the spoons to help medical researchers and providers better understand, measure and alleviate tremors.
Shirin Vala, 65, of Oakland, has had an essential tremor for about a decade.
Without the $295 spoon, Vala said eating was really a challenge because her hands trembled so hard that food fell off the utensils before she could eat it. The spoon definitely improved her situation.
“I was surprised that I held the food in there so much better. It makes eating much easier, especially if I’m out at a restaurant,” she said.
