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Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - MDURANCE (Pervasive muscle response monitoring for everyone, a physiotherapy revolution)

Teaser

Summary

Musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) cover a wide range of health problems extending from discomfort or minor pain, to more serious medical conditions that can lead to a permanent disability. Up to 80% of the population will suffer MSD at some point in their life and every year the age of the first symptoms is decreasing. Currently, MSDs are the most common cause of incapacitation in the workplace on people under 50 years old, over cancer or diabetes. The most common muscle problems nowadays are low back pain, knee problems and shoulder injuries, among others.

The Electromyographic (EMG) technique can be a basic tool in the assessment and evaluation of MSDs through the study of the electrical activity of the skeletal muscles. However, current solutions are very complex to use and costly restricting their usage to highly specialised centres.

mDurance is a very intuitive digital tool designed for a wide market, from the most expert specialist to a general physiotherapist from a high-performance sport centre. At mDurance Solutions, we aim to provide health professionals with an innovative tool that will improve todayÂ´s subjective methods of prevention, treatment and recovery from a muscle disorder.

During the six month feasibility study we have shown that the solution is technically feasible through developing an initial version of our mDurance Analytics biofeedback system and successfully demonstrating this to a potential client.

Practical feasibility has also been shown through stakeholder analysis potential end client feedback, achievable medical class IIa aprovals plan. Fnally economic feasibility has been shown with detailed market size mapping, market entry plan, business model and Profit & Loss calculations showing project payback by October 2023.

Overall, we have concluded that mDurance as a business and a help for society is feasible.

Work performed

Over six months, we have been working on our SME Phase 1 project and were able to focus on better understanding our offering versus the needs of our clients and needed stakeholders in the sales channel. As per the Phase 1 proposal, we completed the work according to the following tasks:
Task 1: Business Plan: Working with our Business Coach we reviewed our SWOT analysis, generating a new version together with some updated risks and contingency plans for those. We have developed an update regarding the competitors and provide recorded annual revenues that indicate their market share. A Cost-benefit analysis has been generated showing health centre efficiency improvements and Key milestones for the next five years (P&L table) and future financing sources have been detailed
Task 2 Demonstrate product to stakeholders
For dissemination, we provided examples of the interaction that we have had with various potential clients, including training courses. We contacted with associations and a summary of the feedback received from the potential end-users and other stakeholders.
Task 3 Multi-channel Marketing Strategy
We detailed a communication plan for the next three years and although we do not yet have a full-time communications manager we are already communicating across various mediums, including direct visits, conferences and training courses as we have explained in the full report.
Task 4 Certifications and Intellectual Property Strategy
To certify our product for medical acceptance and usage, we have worked with PSConsulting and developed a CE Class IIa certification plan. We have also completed an analysis regarding our Intellectual Property and how best to protect it.
Overall, this Feasibility Study has allowed us to expand our market knowledge. We have garnered further end-user and stakeholder input that is being used for refining product definition and commercial planning. Whats really positive is that we have confirmed that there are various parties really interested in mDurance Solutions and waiting for our product! Combined with the fact that we have also been able to confirm further technical and economic feasibility aspects, we are really excited to now be moving to a stronger market entry phase for mDurance.

Final results

Development of our MDurance Analytics biofeedback system for our platform has been initiated. We have been developing the framework for our MSD classification modules that will be based on the protocolization of a battery of specific tests for each joint. The objective of these protocols will be to verify the most interesting functional characteristics to know the neuromuscular health of the muscles associated to each joint segment. Some of these characteristics are: average and maximum muscle contractile capacity, motor control, timing of activation, symmetry, muscle fatigue and ROM. We are now able to automatically highlight the sections of our data input (EMG and Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU)) where there is muscle activity.

It is known that patients with a low back muscle disorder must have a single prominent section that starts in the flexion phase and ends in the extension phase. Healthy subjects should not have any prominent stretch of activity between the flexion and relaxation phase.
Thus, our processing will now allow us to rapidly and clearly highlight patients with a problem. This has moved us past the current State Of the Art (Competitors with complex interfaces that rely solely on human interpretaion) and we are very excited to move to the next step (to work with centres in Seville, Badajoz, Barcelona and Elche, where data from real patients with lumbar, knee and shoulder injuries are being recorded in order to evaluate under controlled tests the generic flexion and extension phases of healthy and unhealthy patients).
Mdurance will provide advanced processing together with simplified interfaces to allow non-experts to access the results from EMG sensors for the first time. Like this Professionals new to the technology can access its benefits and patients can readily understand the displayed outputs.

Overall mDurance is expected to have shipped over 11,000 units by 2025, installed in multiple health centres, this will have a positive effect for over 390,000 patients per year (conservative estimate) improving their recovery speed from Muscular Skeleton Disorders, improving quality of life and speeding return to work, thus delivering a strong social-economic impact for society at large.