DALLAS -- Raleigh Dewan’s grandmother was a true Southern belle.
For family dinners, Grand June would get out the fine china and cook lavish meals of fried chicken with spiced grits, brown gravy and yeast rolls that took hours to rise, but that Dewan said came out “insanely” beautiful.
When Grand June developed Parkinson’s disease, Dewan watched as hand tremors made it difficult for her to hold a spoon and share meals with her family. Parkinson’s was stealing away his grandmother’s agency.
Entering SMU, Dewan was determined to find a solution for Grand June and patients like her.
Three years later, he is a senior at SMU and creator of SteadiSpoon, a self-stabilizing spoon that helps patients with hand tremors feed themselves with dignity. SteadiSpoon has no motors or batteries and was inspired by a principle Dewan discovered on film sets. The product has received tens of thousands of dollars in seed money and recently won a $20,000 grant from VentureWell, an organization that supports student inventions.
After testing SteadiSpoon with Parkinson’s patients earlier this year, Dewan and his team want to improve the design and create a batch for sale by early next year.
At the heart of Dewan’s entrepreneurial spirit is love for his grandmother, who passed away in 2020.
“I think especially those last few years of life for Parkinson’s patients could be made so much better if they are able to have those close family meals,” he said. “To not be robbed of that sense of agency and autonomy that comes from what you’ve done your entire life: to feed yourself.”
From stage to spoon
Grand June spent 42 years of her life as a schoolteacher in rural Hazen, Ark. Growing up, Dewan spent summers with her, feasting on sweet iced tea and “exquisitely-cooked meals.”
When Grand June’s hand tremors made it difficult for her to hold a spoon, Dewan was determined to help her enjoy their family meals.
He saw that there were self-stabilizing cutlery sets on the market, but many used motors and electronics to function, meaning they cost over $200 and required regular charging to function properly. Non-motorized spoons were cheaper, but less effective at countering tremors in all three axes of motion — X, Y and Z.
Dewan discovered a solution in an unlikely place: film sets.
Dewan’s two older brothers work in the film industry ― one as an actor, the other as a filmmaker. Dewan had watched massive cameras swing through the air, capturing chaotic action scenes with smooth, seamless motion. He was captivated by the Steadicam mounts that kept cameras level throughout.
“[Steadicam] could stabilize this massive Hollywood film set camera, doing all these cool tricks and turns,” said Dewan. “But somehow, we couldn’t stabilize my 90-pound grandmother’s trembling hand?”
Dewan wondered whether he could translate the Steadicam technology into a spoon to help his grandmother eat. He pitched it as a business idea in a freshman year entrepreneurship class at SMU and won the class contest.
He reached out to Bruce Snider, a visiting professor and Entrepreneur-in-Residence at SMU. Snider was taken by Dewan’s passion and offered to contribute mentorship and help to design the spoon.
“[Dewan is] an excellent leader and manager,” Snider said. “And he would ask for help, and I would guide him as best I could.”
One of Dewan’s friends offered to connect him to the University of Oklahoma’s Stephenson School of Biomedical Engineering to see if their engineers could help develop the SteadiSpoon. Dewan agreed.
An emotional road
At first, Dewan worked with engineers at OU to downsize the Steadicam technology into a motorized SteadiSpoon. The product they came up with worked, but was too big for Dewan’s hands. Dewan, who is 6 feet tall, figured if the spoon was uncomfortable in his palm, it wouldn’t fit into his grandmother’s, much less anyone else’s.
Then, in 2020, Dewan’s Grand June passed away. He was faced with a difficult decision: did he want to keep going with SteadiSpoon?
“I thought, man, I don’t know if I want to do this anymore,” he said. “Because the person who I wanted to help, I can’t help anymore.”
While going through Grand June’s will and belongings, Dewan saw that his grandmother had donated much of her property and savings to support members of her small-town community. That struck a chord with Dewan: She had dedicated her life to helping people.
He decided to give SteadiSpoon another go. While the product could no longer help his grandmother, Dewan hoped it could make a difference in the lives of patients like her.
During Dewan’s sophomore year at SMU, the engineering team tried an all-mechanical approach to the spoon. No motors, no sensors. It would be much harder to create. But if they could do it, the spoons would be cheaper and easier to produce.
After two years of work and five prototypes, the engineering team came up with a new-and-improved SteadiSpoon. The device has built-in mechanisms that stabilize tremors in all three dimensions, with no charging or batteries required.
This year, OU engineers tested the spoon with Parkinson’s patients. They brought five patients to a motion capture lab at OU, put a bowl of cereal in front of them and asked them to simulate eating a meal. The engineers analyzed 3-D data on how well SteadiSpoon helped patients stabilize their tremors compared to a normal spoon.
The engineers found that SteadiSpoon performed at 95% the efficacy of the leading motorized spoon on the market. Since SteadiSpoon has no motors, it can be easily 3-D printed and could be sold at a cheaper price.
‘This is a problem that everybody… wants to help solve’
Dewan wants to improve SteadiSpoon’s design using feedback from the test with Parkinson’s patients. He’s also hoping he can get the spoon to an even higher efficacy. Once that’s done, the team can start manufacturing spoons for sale as early as next year.
He and SMU student Mason Morland, the start-up’s vice president of operations, are also working to secure more funding. This year, SteadiSpoon netted $7,500 at Texas Christian University’s national Values and Ventures competition and $5,000 at SMU’s annual Big iDeas Competition.
Dewan’s team is also reaching out to Parkinson’s charities and nonprofit organizations to spread the word about SteadiSpoon, including the Dallas Area Parkinson’s Society. He wants caregivers who purchase the product to be able to donate a portion of the proceeds to their local Parkinson’s foundation.
While spreading the word about SteadiSpoon, Dewan was touched by how many people connected personally with his mission. So many of the people he talked with had family members dealing with Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, arthritis or other conditions that lead to shaky hands and grip.
“That’s been the most rewarding part for me,” he said, “to see that this is a problem that everybody sees, and that everybody wants to help solve.”
Dewan said he doesn’t think grief subsides. Instead, the time between waves grows longer. He said Grand June has been a strong motivating force, pushing him to keep going.
“I definitely have felt her spirit at certain points in this journey,” he said, “when things got really tough.”
____
Adithi Ramakrishnan is a science reporting fellow at The Dallas Morning News. Her fellowship is supported by the University of Texas at Dallas. The News makes all editorial decisions.
____
____
