Over 100M people across Europe suffer from chronic musculoskeletal disorders (MSD) such as rheumatoid arthritis, neck, lumbar and shoulder pain. Most affected is Europe’s working age population where such pain is the single biggest cause of temporary disability (TD), responsible for healthcare costs of up to 2% of Europe’s GDP and billions of Euros in lost worker productivity.
60% of patients with MSD’s are misdiagnosed and are prescribed an ineffective rehabilitation program that delays or prevents their full recovery. A number of clinicians have confirmed this to us stating that they do not have the tools to measure movement conditions in an objective and reliable way.
Although there are solutions available that can aid in diagnosing and treating MSD’s, they do not match the needs of clinicians and health centres.
The reasons as to why health centres are looking for a new solution are multiple as current systems on the market: are prohibitively expensive for healthcare budgets; are non-portable with fixed cameras and equipment; are complex requiring highly skilled personnel to operate and interpret results; take a long time to set up; do not comply with medical device standards; are not interoperable with existing health centre equipment and patient information systems; are stand-alone products that cannot be upgraded with new wearables and features.
We aim to deliver an advanced solution to support the diagnosis and treatment phases for patients suffering from musculoskeletal disabilities resulting in: a better quality of life, a quicker return to work, and a reduction in costs for healthcare centres.
These objectives of the DyCare project will allow us to achieve the impacts of reducing MSD rehabilitation costs per patient by 10% annually and cutting temporary disability for these patients from an average of 60 days to 25 days a year by 2022.
