By Rebecca Szkutak
As a PhD student focused on sensor design at MIT’s Media Lab, Nan-Wei Gong worked frequently with the local Major League Baseball team, the Boston Red Sox. Through this collaboration, she couldn’t help but wonder why the team had access to a host of equipment — and professionals — to diagnose and predict musculoskeletal injuries, while for the average person, herself included, such care came in the form of a simple exam or questionnaire despite these injuries impacting a predicted 1.7 billion people worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. “Today when you go to the doctor, if you have a neck injury, they will ask you to measure the range of motion, the doctor will put three fingers on the shoulder. Like what are three fingers going to tell you?” Gong tells Forbes. “[Doctors are] basically using their hands to feel the muscle health. These types of exams are very subjective and that leads to a variation of care.”