Here is the second talented team that has been selected for the famous bootcamp, which will take place from March 24th to 26th. They will come to defend their project UBIQUE TECH. This project proposes a solution that allows children with motor disabilities to have motor rehabilitation at home while having fun. It helps children and adults with cerebral palsy or after a stroke to do their physiotherapy exercises at home, through video games. Their exciting interview is below.
Introduce yourselves (Who are you? Where do you come from? How many members does your team have?)
My name is Hassan Lahlou and with Ali Azadi we are the two co-founders of UBIQUE TECH.
Ali graduated from Ecole Polytechnique Paris and Telecom ParisTech. Before founding UBIQUE, he worked as a software developer and as an information system consultant for 10 years. Ali is in charge of product design.
Hassan graduated from ESSEC Business School. Before founding UBIQUE, he worked as a strategy consultant and as a city manager for a healthcare startup in London. Hassan is in charge of marketing and business development.
Today, there are 7 people on our team.
What are the main motivations that led you to apply for the Arkathon Program?
We applied for the Arkathon program in order to have support to develop our activity. Indeed, for the moment we are quickly developing our B2B customer base in France, and we succeeded in automating the customer acquisition process. Our ambition now is to do the same in other countries, and then to reach B2B2C thanks to these professional customers. In addition, we would like to go to the North American market as soon as possible, and for that we would need advice, help and ideally a distribution network.
What is your project about?
Each year in France, an estimated 150,000 people are victims of a stroke, i.e. 1 stroke every 4 minutes. Stroke is the number one cause of acquired disability in adults.
One of the most common consequence of stroke is hemiplegia: a paralysis that affects half of the body, to the right or to the left depending on the area of the brain affected. To improve motor skills in people who have had a stroke, they need regular rehabilitation, with several sessions per week with their therapist as well as exercises to be done at home. In addition to these people who have to undergo rehabilitation very regularly, there are children with cerebral palsy and the elderly.
However, not everyone is equal when it comes to rehabilitation:
- The physically handicapped must do several rehabilitation sessions per week, which are expensive.
- They encounter difficulties in going to sessions and high transportation costs.
- Motor rehabilitation is repetitive and painful. Finding playful solutions is a daily challenge for doctors and parents.
UBIQUE enables part of the home rehabilitation sessions to be carried out without the presence of the therapist. The therapist prescribes exercises remotely and monitors the patient’s progress using the UBIQUE mobile application. In addition, UBIQUE motivates patients to exercise more regularly and seriously.
Our goals:
- Make the patient an actor in his rehabilitation
- Trick the brain and stimulate the motor cortex
- Give meaning to movement
- Create remote medical monitoring
- Increase the rehabilitation practice time
- Help patients return to autonomy
UBIQUE improves the quality of life of patients, for whom rehabilitation exercises become a game, while allowing them to perform them from home, reducing travel costs and sessions, and therefore reduces inequality in access to care.
What needs does it respond to? How is it innovative?
UBIQUE is a digital solution that motivates children and adults who undergo therapy for a long time to do their motor rehabilitation exercises at home and have fun; our goal is to make rehabilitation less repetitive and less painful for everyone.
The project consists of an innovative, at–home physiotherapy solution for individuals, that is easy to use and at an affordable price. It improves the patient’s quality of life and reduces inequalities related to access to care (high prices, difficulty in going to the doctor’s office , transportation fees, etc.). Repetitive rehabilitation movements become fun with video games.
In addition, thanks to the UBIQUE application, therapists using UBIQUE have access to a patient file for each of their patients, in which 4 components are included:
- Prescription of exercises (implementation of a rehabilitation program by selecting animations of motor rehabilitation movements, associated with a duration and a calendar day);
- Tele–consultation (video discussion with the patient to check if their exercises are necessary);
- Monitoring dashboard (monitoring the patient’s progress over time, monitoring the exercises performed);
- Motor rehabilitation assessment (a digital assessment to replace the current paper assessment, which makes it possible to monitor the patient’s progress over several years and facilitate access to information on the assessment thanks to the digital information).
Our goal is to facilitate and make accessible daily rehabilitation within health establishments or at home with remote medical monitoring. We currently have 2 different products:
UBIQUE Kids:
UBIQUE kids is a game application connected by Bluetooth to movement sensors that can be placed on all the joints of the body and measure the patient’s movements. The data is instantly sent to a tablet or TV via Bluetooth.
An iOS / Android application receives the movement data. In this same application, it is possible to prescribe a program consisting of motor rehabilitation exercises that the patient must do thanks to the UBIQUE games.
A dashboard allows the parent, doctor, occupational therapist or physiotherapist to monitor the child’s progress.
UBIQUE Kids is a financially affordable product: 240 € TTC for the sensors and a monthly subscription of € 19.99 incl. tax to access the application.
HABILUP:
Our second target is adults and the elderly who need motor rehabilitation after a stroke. According to the WHO, 15 million people have a stroke each year, and of these, at least 5 million are disabled for life.
The hardware of HABILUP is the same as that of UBIQUE Kids. We are currently working on a new algorithm for the sensors to adapt them for adults. The software will however be different, with new functions added for adults (calibration, patient data, data analysis). We are in contact with the Henri Mondor Hospital and are working with them to finalize our new product.
What do you think makes your approach to the bootcamp different?
We are convinced that our solution changes the lives of our users. For patients, HabilUp enables them to do their rehabilitation differently through games, which generally leads them to do more rehabilitation exercises. For professionals, HabilUp enables them to motivate their patients thanks to our gamified rehabilitation solution, schedule exercises for patients and track their progression remotely.
We can make the difference during the Arkathon bootcamp 2021 since we are currently going through a period that constrains people to do everything remotely and minimizes physical contact. However, a lot of disabled people need to continue their physical rehabilitation in order to not lose their motor capacities, but most of them cannot go to their physical therapist because of the restrictions. This is why all disabled people need an alternative such as HabilUp to pursue their rehabilitation at home and to be able to keep contact with their therapist through a platform in order to continue their progression over months and years.
A final word?
People with motor (functional) disabilities need new projects and entrepreneurs who can find solutions for them during this special period. Ali and I started working on this project before the COVID-19 pandemic, since we believed that disabled people needed a solution like HabilUp (like a “nice to have”). Nowadays and because of the COVID-19 restrictions, we are convinced that HabilUp became a “must have” for every person who needs to do rehabilitation over a long period of time.
AND WE NEED YOU TO HELP US ACHIEVE THIS OBJECTIVE!
For more information on this project, you can consult their website: ubiquetech.fr
Discover the interview of the third team participating to the bootcamp: Improve your posture with SAM 3D
