Semmes-Weinstein monofilament examination is a conventional screening method for diabetes neuropathy. However this method is difficult to control the amount of applied force. The posture of examination is poor for both physician and patient. It also consumes valuable staff and time. Especially, the patient can be biased against the answer. Testing for neuropathy is a regular diabetes care every 1-3 months. Since the medical specialists are at the central hospital in the town. The patients in remote area have to come into the town to have the screening. So, these patients have to spend a large amount of money on MD wage, transportation and treatment cost

The development of robotic monofilament inspector consists of three main parts: Robotic monofilament mechanism, Data communication and graphic user interface (GUI) and control system. The operator performs the examination through the software that we developed. A set of command will be sent to the control box to actuate the robotic monofilament probes. Each probe will randomly press the monofilament fiber on each examination point. The patient has to answer using the answer pad. The answer will be sent back through the control box to store in the hospital database. This software can collect the patient information, analyze the collected answer and report the score to the doctor as a pre-screening prescription. This robotic monofilament inspector was passed through clinical testing with 71 participants and published in Asian journal of surgery in 2010.

The Potential application for this technology is the technique that can applied to not only the plantar of the foot but also else where applicable. Nevertheless, this diagnosis platform can use as a new method for measure the level of neuropathy in diabetes patient and be able to send the diagnosis result via online. This can applied to another diagnosis application.

We proposed the new method the novel robotic monofilament inspector. This method is aimed to be a standard machine for diabetic neuropathy screening. It can apply the identical force for every single time. It is fast and convenient for the long run. And the machine can present the report to the physician and transmit data to store in the hospital database for telemedicine.