The way we walk can be influenced by both our physical and mental states. Poor cardiovascular health can slow down a person’s gait, but so can diseases such as Alzheimer’s and depression. Some conditions make their mark on one’s walking style in other ways, such as asymmetrical steps and uneven distribution of weight over the bottom of the foot.
While there are a number of existing tools to monitor a person’s walking gait, FeetMe, a company based in Paris, France, has developed a smart shoe insole that can monitor a patient’s gait throughout the day’s activities. The company just partnered with Novartis to study whether its technology can help to monitor disease progression in multiple sclerosis (MS) patients.
We were intrigued by this development and took a chance to ask Alexis Mathieu, CEO of FeetMe, a few questions about his company’s devices and what the new partnership aims to achieve.
Medgadget: There is seemingly a myriad of technologies to monitor patient movement. Please describe how FeetMe is different and what are the benefits of your technology?
Alexis Mathieu, FeetMe CEO: Measuring abnormal gait in real world settings can be very challenging. Classical activity trackers or motion sensors have a lot of difficulty to accurately measure abnormal gait and measure gait outside of the motion analysis laboratory.
The main reason is that gait can vary a lot in real world and step segmentation based on existing technologies is not robust when the movement pattern is modified (due to asymmetry, shuffling, etc.). Most of technologies work well on healthy patients or within lab conditions but they require advanced post-processing to be analyzed.
FeetMe technology is built for seamless real world and real time gait evaluation. We combine for the first time a patented technology of pressure sensors, motion sensors and embedded smart algorithms to calculate in real time gait parameters in real time.
For the first time we have built a standalone device able to assess gait in real world without the need of external connection or calculation. As we are leveraging our technology of pressure sensors, we offer unprecedented robustness for step segmentation in real world combined with clinically validated gait spatio-temporal measurements. Our device is also invisible to diminish barriers to use it at home.
This opens new opportunities to assess physical activity, gait and plantar pressure distribution in real world setting for patients suffering from walking difficulties.
Medgadget: How did you come to work on this technology? What was the original motivation for FeetMe?
Mathieu: Back in 2013, while I was graduate student at Ecole polytechnique I met Georges Ha Van MD who takes care of diabetic foot complications in Paris at la Pitié Salpétrière Hospital. He expressed the need for technology to help quantifying the risk of ulcers to prevent them. Based on this expression of an unmet medical need, I started to work on a technology of flexible printed sensors to measure plantar pressure in real world setting.
We then realized that mobility disorders impact patients suffering from various diseases and are not limited to diabetic patients and I expanded the scope of the technology developed.
Medgadget: What kind of patients and therapies is FeetMe intended for?
Mathieu: FeetMe develops solutions with 3 main functions. Better assess, rehabilitate and assist patients suffering from Mobility disorders. Our first product FeetMe Monitor Mobility® is intended to be used by clinicians and patients that need to measure the gait spatio temporal parameters and plantar pressure. FeetMe Monitor evaluates gait-specific parameters, plantar pressure and provides real-time information on such parameters.
Our initial focus is patients suffering from diseases were gait is an endpoint in clinical tests to adapt treatments such as Multiple Sclerosis and Parkinson disease. FeetMe is undertaking a development program in patients with neurodegenerative
diseases, and plans to propose an intended use specific to neurodegenerative disease where this is a need for technologies to support diagnosis.
Medgadget: You’ve partnered with Novartis to help monitor MS patients. Could you please share with us what you hope to achieve through this partnership?
Mathieu: The first step of the partnership is to validate the accuracy of our measurements among Multiple Sclerosis patients against clinical standards (Gaitrite and clinical scales). We will then build new markers out of the data collected in order to better assess MS patients in real world setting. This collected data has for objective to help physicians better assess the transition between RRMM and SPMS with continuous quantitative real world gait measurements.
The tool is also designed to better understand disease evolution and symptomatic effects of different treatments through continuous home measurements.
Medgadget: Are your products available for purchase? What is the expected availability if not?
Mathieu: Our first product FeetMe Monitor Mobility is CE mark and already used in different clinical rehabilitation centers, hospitals or in different clinical studies. We are taking orders and we will ship first customers in the end of Q1 2019.
Medgadget: How do you expect your technology to be adopted and used by patients and clinicians?
Mathieu: Our technology will first be used as a substitute for existing clinical gait tests in hospital and quantitative Gait assessment in motion labs. The technology an objective evaluation of gait parameters in a very quick manner.
The technology should quickly be used outside of the clinical setting and modify habits to assess mobility. That’s where we provide our unique value. We position our product as the world’s first Gait Holter.
Medgadget: What are your long term goals for FeetMe? Are you working on new or related technologies?
Mathieu: As the population is aging and chronic diseases are exploding, there is an urgent need for solutions to support rehabilitation while there is a lack of human resources. Our long term goal is to provide patients and physicians new medical connected solutions to improve mobility and reduce movement disorders at scale.
Our second cornerstone beyond evaluation is Rehabilitation. We are already building FeetMe Rehabilitation Mobility ®, a platform to empower rehabilitation at home based on real time-feedback and cueing from our insoles and remote outcomes monitoring. This solution will be distributed in rehabilitation centers to help them improve repetitive tasks at home and face the lack of human resources.
Last we will introduce smart active technologies that combine our real time measurement capabilities and real time sensitive stimulation to assist patients suffering from specific movement disorders.
Link: FeetMe company homepage…
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