Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - ReHub (Rehabilitation Hub: The World’s first Digital Recovery Therapy solution)

Teaser

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)...

Summary

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. Rehabilitation programmes today rely entirely on manual assessment tools with no objective evidence pre- and post-treatment. Programmes are highly dependent on specialised and costly human resources, which severely limits both access to and effectiveness of rehabilitation therapy. A staggering 75% of the total EU healthcare budget –around 700 B € annually–is used in patients with chronic conditions. By 2050, more than 35% of Europe’s population will be over 60, and 8 out of 10 people over 65 will suffer from chronic diseases and need rehabilitation. DyCare will bring to market the DyCare® ReHub platform – the first Digital Recovery Therapy solution that delivers effective, personalised home rehabilitation for MSD sufferers. An end-to-end solution built on solid medical evidence, ReHub offers the patient a novel tele-rehabilitation platform that guides them through each exercise and empowers them with real-time visual biofeedback. The overall objective of the project is to transform ReHub 1.0 prototype into an integrated ReHub 2.0 Commercial Cloud service platform. The integrated ReHub can tackle the burdens of traditional rehabilitation methodologies and bring it to a novel and more effective level.

Work performed

During the first year of the project, DyCare team together with the advisory board experts and external collaborations, worked to meet all the milestones and have a final version of ReHub for the clinical studies. User experience and algorithms have been updated according to the feedback collected during the validations phases in collaborating centres and experts of the sector. On the other hand, important improvements have been made on the hardware side of the system. New versions of the sensor and the Exercise Kit have been designed, prototyped, tested, certified and finalized as a reference document for manufacturing plan and industrialisation. One of the objectives within this project is the execution of diverse clinical trial -to demonstrates in an objective and impartial way, the impact that ReHub can have in the rehabilitation process, improving adherence and reducing current operating costs. For this reason, a Contracts Research Organization (CRO) has been subcontracted. The CRO is in charge of conducting and administration of the clinical studies, guaranteeing the quality of the results and total neutrality in the same.
Together with the CRO, the principal investigators of the hospital team and part of DyCare team, we have developed study protocols for two pathologies of total knee arthroplasty (TKA) and total hip arthroplasty (THA). The designed studies and protocols have been presented to the Ethics Committees (EC) of the hospitals and are pending final approval-in the case of Hospital Clinic Barcelona – or are in the process of administrative work and preparation for submission to the EC -in the case of Ospedale Molinette of Turin. In the meantime, while waiting for the official approval of the committee, we will run a pre-pilot in these hospitals, commencing the process of training the hospital’s team of how the device works, review the protocol and different stages of the study and clear all the doubts and questions they might have. The pre-pilot will help us to solve the possible issues and pave the way for a successful running of the main clinical study.
As it is widely known, proper dissemination is an essential element in bringing an innovation to market, maximises the impact of the research component of the projects and strengthens and promotes the profile of the companies. In DyCare, we have put a lot of effort on dissemination and communication tasks as it is crucial to reach out to an increased number of interesting audiences, inform and reach out to the sector demonstrating the benefits of our digital health solution and open the (new) markets for our products.
Numerous activities with the aim of dissemination and exploitation has been performed during the first reporting period such as branding, designing new interactive website, design a specific logo for the solution, publishing newsletters, flyers, posters, active presence/participation in the important fair trades, congresses, workshops and social media such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. DyCare’s business development team with the leadership of the CEO tried their best to approach the key opinion leaders, policymakers, health sector main players, clinicians, specialists and other related professionals to disseminate the project and raise interests in our product. Through these activities, we have been able to secure various collaboration agreements with different entities for running demos, clinical sessions, pilot projects and other forms of collaboration. Among these entities, there are research centres, hospitals, insurance companies, sport study centres, sports clubs.
Finally, given the importance of the protection of intellectual property (IP) and patents for SMEs, DyCare has dedicated a significant effort to IP. In particular, a Patent Cooperation Treaty application and a Utility Model have been submitted. Moreover, a technology watch report has been prepared to identify the market trends, segment markets and niche markets for th

Final results

Our innovation solves the main problems of the patients and rehabilitation professionals through 3 novel components:
DyTrack Sensor: our patented movement and strength sensor allows the clinical specialist to perform a true and complete evaluation of the joint, facilitates the physiotherapy, for the first time, by offering the possibility of proposing strength exercises in order to strengthen the joint, gain muscle mass, etc.
Exercise Kit: the patients can use the Kit to perform their prescribed exercises at home without struggling with the positioning of the sensors or other technical issues. By integrating DyTrack sensor in the Kit, simple plastic-based pieces have become smart elements that help the patients in their recovery. Over 100 different exercises can be performed with these two tools, allowing the patient to improve specific muscle regions.
ReHub Cloud Platform: embodies an intelligent system of treatment protocols; enables the physiotherapists to design a customised rehabilitation programme, guides the patients through each exercise and connects the patients with their specialists in real-time.
At the end of the project ReHub is ready to be launched successfully to the market. The focus of the ReHub project is to ensure that our innovative solution meets all the requirements of a medical device and beyond that as a pioneering product in the rehabilitation market. The project’s result is a groundbreaking technological solution providing easy access to quality, affordable rehabilitation services, empowering the elderly people in maintaining an active lifestyle, decreasing the social and economic impacts of musculoskeletal disorders on working-age population. It will also empower the professionals with intelligent assessment and advanced remote follow-up tool and provide them with a lot more precise instrument in joints parameters measurement.

Website & more info

More info: https://www.dycare.com/rehub/.