SME Innovation Associate: matching MyTherapyTools up with a talented researcher

Project Information

MyTherapyTools

Grant agreement ID: 739754

DOI

10.3030/739754

Project terminated on 28 June 2018

EC signature date 21 April 2017

Start date 1 March 2018

End date 28 February 2019

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Innovation In SMEs

Total cost

€ 86 312,50

EU contribution

€ 86 312,50

Coordinated by

MY THERAPY TOOLS SL
Spain

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - MyTherapyTools (SME Innovation Associate: matching MyTherapyTools up with a talented researcher)

Reporting period: 2018-03-01 to 2019-02-28

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Functional impairments caused by Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) have increased significantly in the last years, reaching pandemic levels (42 million people in the EU). The WHO has warned about the dramatic increase expected in the following decades due to the close relationship between nervous system injuries and population ageing, having an even more considerable impact on the European countries. This has serious consequences in terms of sustainability of our healthcare systems: services of curative and rehabilitative care have become a real challenge or all of the EU Member States, as they account for more than 50% of the total healthcare expenditure. One of the most representative examples is healthcare costs addressed to treating stroke (one of the most present ABIs): every year, there are more than 1,5 million people suffering a stroke in the EU. This accounts for €22billion/year (4% of the whole yearly healthcare expenditure in the EU).

There exists a potential opportunity to cut healthcare costs related to ABIs’ rehabilitation therapies while keeping and improving the provision of therapies to patients. For this reason, we aim at market our flagship product for the growing home-care market: My Therapy Tools (MTT): a cloud-based platform for tele-rehabilitation treatments of the main functional disorders present in patients with Acquired Brain Injury (AIB)
The goal is to develop new ICT enabled tools able to contribute significantly to the provisioning of better and more effective neuro-rehabilitation by developing MTT-HOME: a cloud-based platform of telerehabilitation treatments that target the main functional disorders present in patients with Acquired Brain Injury (ABI).

The H2020 SME Innovation Associate offers the opportunity to MyTherapyTools to recruit a highly qualified specialist that is not available on the Spanish job market, but whose knowledge would be crucial to open up opportunities for innovation and significant growth for the enterprise. The incorporation of an Innovation Associate, with an expert profile in, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) with capabilities to program and skills to apply motivational mechanisms of game theory, will help MTT 1) to establish the position of the organization with respect to the competition in order to carry out a detailed feasibility study to define our technological and innovation needs, and 2) to support MTT´s technical team to undertake final technology developments and refinements needed to make MTT HOME a highly-scaleable world-product for healthcare providers.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

MTT PROFESSIONAL has been conceived as a versatile central hub under permanent upgradability and improvement for connecting the virtual platform building blocks to run MTT HOME. During the project execution, some improvements on the design of the game platform have been carried out, especially regarding the definition of requirements in order to review the main characteristics of MTT HOME, our leading product for tele-rehabilitation embedded in MTT PROFESSIONAL, the online virtual platform for neuro-rehabilitation: 1) Modularity; 2) Natural movements´ allowance; 3) Flexibility; 4) Price-wise and a cloud-based management module for the therapist for patient monitoring.

Additionally, once a detailed Business Innovation Plan was addressed, and the most critical aspects for future growth were deeply studied and analysed by MyTherapyTools team, the Innovation Associate worked on the first 3 steps of the multi-level strategy designed for leveraging our international growth thanks to the knowledge and experience acquired during Tailored and Core Training: 1) Strategic Business Review, 2) Business Visioning, 3) Business Strategy Development, 4) Implementation. Additionally, some technology watching tasks were performed in order to identify current, and future MTT competitors and some collaborations were done with the technical team performing some programming for MTT-HOME refinement.

These activities conducted to the first steps of the project goal: the development of new ICT enabled tools able to contribute significantly to the provisioning of better and more effective rehabilitation.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

MTT operates within the market of Virtual Reality and Telerehabilitation technologies. These two markets are experiencing a stunning high growth: The global Telemedicine market was valued at €17 million in 2015, and it is expected to grow at a CAGR of 19% during 2016-2022. Whilst the Virtual Reality is expected to reach €113 billion by 2022, at a CAGR of 76% during 2016-2022.

There are 3 relevant market drivers behind the above high-growth estimations, that explains also the momentum and opportunity window open to MTT: 1) Ageing population; 2) The lack of specialized personnel to service the increasing number of patients requiring daily care in the traditional way; and finally, 3) the increasing need of integrated electronic medical record (EHR).

Within this context, MTT addresses 2 user groups, considered worldwide, that will potentially benefit from the advantages that our tool offers: 1) ABI Patients- In need of improving their quality of life, feeling more incentive and less isolated and dependent, saving time and money in transportation. 2) Therapists and Clinical community in need of effective therapies that reduce care loads by multiply by at least 2 the intensity of the treatment at the same time reducing the patients’ dependency on the therapist and allowing for integral training of the 3 core functions (cognitive, sensitive and motor) needed for maximising therapy effectiveness. Additionally, one of the most relevant quantified socio-economic benefits is that MTT sessions represent more than 50% in cost savings, while patient saves 100% in transportation and has access to 50% more rehabilitation sessions.

Patients executing rehabilitation exercises with MTT tele-rehabilitation platform

Patients executing rehabilitation exercises with MTT tele-rehabilitation platform