Victory for Gait Up and Definition12

Company mission: Over a billion people around the world have trouble walking. Gait Up has developed a novel, low-cost system that can perform detailed assessments of gait disorders and help doctors determine the best treatment and physical-therapy protocols, without needing to perform the standard laboratory analyses. Its system, called Kinemagics, consists of a set of three wearable sensors that are attached to a patient’s feet and pelvis. The sensors, equipped with accelerometers and gyroscopes, are used to measure the body’s movements. They are connected to an extensive research-grade library of algorithms for processing the data and generating complete measurements of the patients’ key gait parameters to aid in clinical evaluation. With CSEM’s support, Gait Up plans to enhance its state-of-the-art motion algorithm for lower-limb joint angle measurement during the gait activity and test it on pathologies such as stroke, Parkinson’s disease, cerebral palsy and hip and knee arthritis. CSEM’s contribution will speed the development of a new demonstrator, which is expected to obtain the CE label and FDA approval in 2022.

Company mission: 70,000 people in Europe suffer from speech impairment, or aphasia, every year, usually following a stroke. Definition12 has developed an app that allows aphasia patients to perform individual, personalized, and supervised therapeutic exercises at home, helping to restore their speaking ability. The app, called Aphasia, has been clinically tested and is available for iOS and Android tablets.

It works in part by displaying short videos in which a therapist recites words and sentences. The patients can hear the therapist and, by watching the corresponding facial expressions, see how the words should be articulated. At the same time, an artificial intelligence algorithm analyzes the patient’s voice and provides qualified feedback to both the therapist and patient. This allows therapists to continuously adapt patients’ exercises, and allows patients to hear and correct their own speech deficits. With CSEM’s support, Definition12 plans to develop new artificial intelligence algorithms for translating therapists’ voices and facial expressions into several languages and dialects, in order to help aphasia patients around the world learn to speak again. A market-ready version of the app should be available two years after the development work begins.