The warmth of a hug, the safety of a handshake, the intimacy of a caress evoke deep emotions all attributable to the touch that transforms the physicality of an interaction into something that reaches directly to our heart, evoking primordial instincts. Touch is one of the first senses that develops already from the womb and that allows you to create that intimacy between mother and child that lasts for the rest of life.
The pandemic has isolated us, imprisoned us in invisible two-meter-by-two-meter cells and deprived us of contact with our dearest loved ones. We were afraid of any gesture of affection that involved physical contact, such as holding our own children by the hand. For the sick hospitalized in isolation in a Covid ward for weeks, it was distressing not to be able to receive the reassuring caress of loved ones. Deprivation of physical contact takes the name of “skin hunger”, and is one of the most important consequences of isolation, so much so that hospitals and RSA have set up “hug tents” to allow families to hug their loved ones safely.
This dramatic crisis has been the engine of important scientific and technological innovations starting from vaccines up to teleconferencing systems, such as Meet, Zoom, Teams, which have gone from being tools for a few professionals to tools for mass communication. However, the audio-video communication systems do not return the heat of the contact and leave the problem of “skin hunger” unsolved. Scientists and researchers from all over the world are working in the laboratories of research centers, universities and large multinationals such as Facebook, Apple and Microsoft to create wearable technologies capable of transmitting the sense of touch, vital for humans, at a distance. in order to mitigate the negative effects of isolation.
Together with my research team at the University of Siena and the Italian Institute of Technology we have recently developed and patented devices wearable, such as rings and thimbles, able to record and transmit tactile sensations remotely to feel the warmth of a hand or the thrill of an emotion on the skin. These are the technologies that will be able to partially restore the possibility of interacting through remote contact with patients in isolation from Covid and that will be able to open new scenarios in the field of virtual and augmented reality and in telemedicine.
The digitization of touch is a springboard towards largely unexplored application scenarios in telemedicine. Clinicians equipped with wearable digital touch devices will be able to remotely palpate the skin, breast or abdomen thus providing telemedicine with an essential phase of remote physical examination: telepalpation. During the television, the clinician will have the opportunity to use not only sight and hearing but also the sense of touch to make remote diagnosis or remotely evaluate the evolution of dermatological or oncological therapies.
Einstein (the world as I see it, 1931) said that the crisis is a blessing because the crisis brings progress, because creativity is born from anguish as day is born from night. During the forced isolation of this last year I have often heard the echo of these words that have given me the strength to react to the pandemic by thinking of science and innovation as the tool for rebirth.
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