Neurological diseases affect the capacity of motor control in people suffering them, in severe cases, the complete absence of muscular function. Eating, dressing, walking or self-care can become difficult tasks due to the loss of that function. Looking only to stroke incidence in EU27, this is happening to over 1 254 000 people per year. However, due to brain neurosplasticity principle, it has been shown that patients can recover part or the whole lost function with rehabilitation. In most cases people are treated in acute and subacute periods through manual therapy with some orthotics support. However, in the last years emerging technologies have made huge progress to develop solutions/medical devices to enhance rehabilitation of different pathologies through neuroimaging, neurostimulation, robotics or muscle oriented technologies. Some of them are still in research and demonstrating its effectiveness in different studies since others (like Functional ElectroStimulatio, FES) have already shown its efficacy vs. manual therapy and orthotics, and are now being introduced to the market. In the FES field the conventional technology is using one anode and one cathode to make the stimulation, facing some challenges in effectiveness and in the expertise level required for a clinician to use it due to positioning/calibration of the electrode and selectiveness/precision of the stimulation. Fesia Technology was born to solve this issues with the final mission to improve quality of life of people that have lost motor function through selling medical devices. Based on a new FES technology, matrix electrode, our product can stimulate each area more precise and selectively and allows an automatic parametrization of the stimulation pattern which brings many improvements: fatigue reduction allowing more intense rehabilitation, reach more natural movements, do not require FES expertise, reduces set up times and is dynamically adjustable. This helps clinics and rehabilitation centres to treat better the patients and achieves certain level of independence of the patient in the first phases of the pathology but not in the final and longest step, chronic stage. What if we could bring this technology to patient’s home for the chronic stage? Imagine a person that has suffered a drop foot pathology and has the possibility to wear continuously a neuroprosthesis that can help him going securely (without the possibility to fall) and naturally (without compensatory movements) to the supermarket to buy groceries, sitting down to have a coffee in a coffee-shop and walking through a park with his/her children once anbulatory period has end. Additionally, during all this time his brain would be training and re-learning the function of walking due to neuroplasticity ability so with the time the assistance of the neuroprosthesis will be less and less necessary. This would imply a radical change in the life of this people and also in the way health systems cand treat these pathologies. Achieving that new standard through a solution based in Fesia technology is our goal.
Therefore, overall objective of the Fesia Walkhome project is to develop a neuroprostheses that will help patients in a better, more independent and more customized rehabilitation of drop foot pathology. For that purpose, we needed to understand many things that were analysed in the SME Phase project: differences that the home product should have vs. the clinical product (in terms of technology, market needs, business model, regulatory), key markets for this product (based on incidence, market reimbursement strategies, etc.), current competitive landscape, potential business model, market willingness to pay, and go-to-market strategy. This has help us developing a solid development and business plan to pursue the opportunity.
