Let me switch gears a little bit and focus in on the client’s point of view. How does a client benefit from the use of this technology? If I go to a clinic or a practitioner that has this, how am I going to benefit?
Dr. Ryan Comeau: That is an excellent point. That is one of the significant advantages that we feel Kinetisense provides. From a clinical standpoint, as a patient, if you are going in and let’s say that as a patient you have injured your shoulder, and you are going in to get rehab on your shoulder and trying to improve range of motion that has pain. Your practitioner having Kinetisense is a significant advantage to you in a couple of different ways. First of all, the practitioner can see trends in your improvements or regressions over the course of treatment. Practitioners have different types of treatments that they can employ or use on any given type of injury. However, they must have data and information on improvements or regressions so they can quickly move to a different kind of treatment if that is necessary. Data also helps them move to a certain level of home care rehab or what have you. It gives the ability of the practitioner to move to the ideal treatments, to be able to change the course of treatment if it is not working. Unfortunately, one of the most significant issues that we have in rehabilitation is that practitioners will just stick with the same type of treatment, even if the treatment is not working. It is not because they only have one treatment. It is because they do not have the data or the information to track and make the proper decisions. That is a significant part.
The other part of Kinetisense is that we have designed Kinetisense to involve the patient. The patient can see themselves moving on the screen in real time. What we found through research is having that patient involvement in the process of the assessment increases the outcomes tremendously and also improves patient compliance. When a patient can see themselves in real time, or they see the graphs of their improvements, even if they are in pain, it makes them want to work harder at their own care. It makes them want to stay true to the prescribed rehab plan of the practitioner, and therefore we get better outcomes.
I do have an example of this from one of our users who is a physiotherapist in Los Angeles who had a case of a patient that had a frozen shoulder. Frozen shoulder is a problem that can occur and often over the age of 40 in women it is prevalent. All of a sudden, the range of motion of the shoulder regresses quite quickly, and the shoulder almost becomes stuck to one side. It is a very, very difficult condition to treat. Often as practitioners, we are looking for a very minute, small improvements over time. This patient had been going to many different practitioners, and I am sure the practitioners were helping her, but for her, she was still in pain, and she could not see the small improvement she was making because they did not have any tools to provide that data. The practitioner in Los Angeles that she went to see did have Kinetisense. Over the course of treatment, the practitioner was able to take a range of motion assessments and show a graph of the improved range of motion and her positively trending range of motion. She stayed with the treatment plan, and she worked harder at her home care because every time she would come back, she would be able to see the small changes and overall had a complete recovery.
That is an example of how technology or how involving and incorporating the patient in the process can have a dramatic effect on the patient outcome. Without that technology, she may have jumped to another practitioner, or she may have just given up on rehabbing that shoulder altogether.
That was the point I was going to make about compliance. You go to your physical therapy and then you still have exercises you have to do at home. If you do not see progress, you sometimes don’t do the things you have to do at home, and you do not get the outcome you want. Motivation and engagement are very, very critical to successful outcomes in rehabilitation. The people that don’t do it take longer to recover and sometimes they never get the full range of motion or full functionality because they do not put in the work. One reason they do not do it is they do not see progress. Your system is a great tool to get that immediate feedback and to get the visual verification!
Dr. Ryan Comeau: It is incredibly powerful for people. It is one of the most overlooked aspects of rehabilitation. It is the ability to connect with that patient. Unfortunately, a lot of times technology can hinder that. We feel the way that we developed Kinetisense that we promote that connection.
With most new technologies, there is a certain amount of concerns, reservations, and some misconceptions. What are some of the most significant misconceptions people may have had about your product and how did they overcome them?
Dr. Ryan Comeau: One of the most significant misconceptions that we have is that technology that is 3D motion capture based is costly. This notion of the cost comes from the fact that the Vicon system, which is a nine-camera research system, costs over $90,000 and are seen in biomechanics labs. Many practitioners know about these types of products, and when they hear about clinical based motion capture, they automatically feel that it is going to be out of their price point. The beautiful thing with Kinetisense is that we are using a camera that’s available to the masses. It is very affordable. The Kinect camera and these different motion-based cameras that we use are around the $100 to $140 price point. By adding a Windows 10 computer and then our software which is about $120 per month, makes an incredibly affordable research-based motion capture system for the clinic or the gym. That was one of the biggest misconceptions that we see, is that we are a product that would be unaffordable, and people are usually quite amazed when they hear our pricing. It is something that’s palpable.
