Innovatie

MIRA rehab

Ontwikkeling

MIRA helps people perform their exercises, gives them incentives to progress and tracks not only when they have done their exercises, but how effectively they are doing them. The result is better and faster recovery times for patients. For therapists, MIRA offers a patient management dashboard through which games can be customized or even prescribed, while progress can be tracked in real time.

Digitalisering

(Tele)monitoring

Regio Niet uit Nederland of Vlaanderen

Wouter Kracht

Probleemstelling

Patients in need of physiotherapy have difficult time rehabilitation. Adherence to exercises is low (<70%), despite professional agreement that compliance would reduce the total time needed for rehabilitation. 11.8 weeks is the average wait time across the NHS in England to see a physiotherapist and to receive the first treatment session. Commissioners pay for longer treatment plans, even though quicker recovery would benefit both the patient and the healthcare sector. Furthermore, cronic conditions require frequent and regular exercises, which leads to boredom. Patients need new, exciting ways to be included in their therapy and follow the necessary treatment.

Oplossing

MIRA is a software platform designed to make physiotherapy fun and convenient for patients recovering from surgery or injury. The system transforms existing physical therapy exercises into video-games, and uses an external sensor, such as Microsoft Kinect, to track and assess patient compliance.

Doelgroep

The initial target market is the UK and Western Europe. In the UK alone, more than 8.8 million new patients a year receive physiotherapy services delivered by roughly 46,800 physios, over 8,000 businesses, generating over £3.44bn in revenue per year. The vision is to expand MIRA to reach a broader international market. For example, the US market generates $30bn in revenue from 90,000 physiotherapy businesses with the 293,000 physiotherapists, and had an annual growth of 4.5% in 2008-2013.

Verdienmodel

1. MIRA Software
licences and versions are developed to fit the clients’ needs:
Software Version / Licence / Price / Customer / User / Launch
(A) MIRA Clinic Local / Annual / £2,500 / Clinic / Physio & Patient / Oct. 2014
(B) MIRA Home Local / One-time / £50 / Patient / Patient / Oct. 2014
(C) MIRA Clinic Online / Annual / £4,000 / Clinic / Physio & Patient / Sep. 2015
(D) MIRA Home Online / Monthly / £10 / Patient / Patient / Sep. 2015

2. Co-development partnerships
MIRA is an extensible software platform which allows the adding of new games and exercises. As such, collaborations for co-development of exercises are an option of a revenue stream for MIRA Rehab.

MIRA Rehab has secured revenue to co-develop therapy games in partnership with the University of Manchester and the Central Manchester Foundation Trust. The company is open to similar partnerships as they generate revenue, increase the company’s credibility and accelerate the development of new games and exercises based on what the market needs while creating new research opportunities.

Concurrentie

There are a several competitors trying to gamify physiotherapy. Among these are: Reflexion Health, VirtualRehab, MotionCare360, Doctor Kinetic, Jintronix or GesRehab. Despite this large number of competitors, some with far greater financial support, MIRA has managed to develop a series of key differentiation factors that can both individualize the product and help secure a sizable share of the market:
-- Key contacts and clients in the UK market, including key opinion leaders
-- Strong R&D team with low production costs (based in Romania)
-- Use of affordable and easy to reach, off the shelf technology
-- Home and clinic use; product with rich features focused on patient management, patient uptake improvement and patient progress tracking
Planned, completed and ongoing clinical trials and pilots that show the clinical validity of the product.

Unieke kenmerken

The innovation behind MIRA comes from the novelty of the technology being used in a serious field. MIRA combines existing, low-cost, motion sensing hardware with custom video-games to provide a more exciting way for patients to recover. When we first started the project, Microsoft Kinect was a kid’s toy meant to help XBOX compete with the Nintendo Wii in bringing video-games from the basement to the living room. We saw the potential of the device in physiotherapy, using it for motion games with patients with stroke or a bone fracture, rather than healthy players.

Intellectueel eigendom

As MIRA is a software application, the company has not applied for any patent as the resources would be better used in developing a great application, rather than patenting something that can be easily copied without infringement.

Organisatie

MIRA Rehab Ltd. is a private company registered in England and Wales, with the office in London. The company is formed out of its founders (Cosmin Mihaiu, Alina Calin, Andrei Cantea and Andrei Dascalu), Healthbox (an accelerator for health-tech start-ups), as well as two Romanian investors. The founding team has been working together for over 4 years, participating in several competitions and winning international awards.

Implementatiestrategie

The main revenue of MIRA Rehab will come from selling the MIRA software to clinical institutions and people recovering at home. MIRA Rehab will directly sell to clinical institutions which can benefit from MIRA software. The strategy is to approach the high level, internationally renowned clinics to increase MIRA’s credibility. The plan is to develop partnerships with distributors for the delivery of MIRA in clinical institutions. The resources and credibility of large corporates (e.g. Jonhnson&Johnson, etc.) will ensure MIRA’s adoption in the UK and abroad. As the MIRA products are software, purchasers will be able to download MIRA through MIRA Rehab’s website. Furthermore, once MIRA Online is launched, the application will use the internet to communicate between the home and clinic implementations, to provide the clinician with the patient’s home evolution.