Evolv is a CE-certified medical device manufacturer that uses the latest gaming, AI and VR technology to rehabilitate patients with neurological injuries.
In 2020, Evolv’s RehabKit helped stroke patients around the UK continue their therapy at home while the world was in shutdown. The machine is the first therapeutic device to feature the Azure Kinect 3D sensor camera which uses AI for precise motion tracking.
Stroke Rehab Times talks to Evolv CEO David Fried about how telerehabilitation is reshaping healthcare.
How did Covid change what you guys were doing at Evolv?
Our world ground to a halt when the pandemic hit. Our big sales channel was hospitals and clinics and they were all closed.
We’d been working in telerehabilitation since 2013. Our first tele rehab project was in Russia where it’s an eight-hour train trip each way just to get to the nearest rehab clinic.
But COVID came and we said, okay, we’ve got this new RehabKit that we’ve developed for tele rehab, let’s see if we can get it out to more people.
You are a Microsoft Partner. How did they help you distribute the RehabKits?
We are part of the Microsoft startups programme and their global social entrepreneurship programme.
We said listen, the world is on fire. We work with the clinical partners who cannot provide treatment to their patients because they’re at home. They’re trying to do stuff over Zoom. But it’s not the same thing, because you need a therapist on the other side.
Our kits don’t replace a therapist, but they’re a way of delivering therapeutic activity and making the patient more autonomous. Patients become active members of their own therapy, which patients and carers love.
We worked with Microsoft and PC manufacturer ZOTAC to donate our RehabKits to three partners, including UCL Queen Square. The team over there had initially helped us develop and test the product.
We delivered the kits and they rolled them out as part of their task of delivering extra activity that started in September of 2020. That’s still going on.
What feedback have you had from stroke patients?
They love it. They see improvements and they want to keep improving. This is a way of delivering it and making sure that there’s a therapist who can tailor the rehab to the patient’s needs.
Stroke is a huge problem around the world, be it first world countries or third world countries. And the only way to help people get back on their feet and be able to use their upper limbs and be mobile is by providing a greater dose of therapy.
You simply cannot do that with the current healthcare system in the UK, Spain or the US. There’s just not enough therapists to go around.
Unfortunately, the age of stroke survivors is going down and the number of stroke survivors is going up. So it’s a perfect storm for a disaster without there being an intervention.
How did you create the therapeutic games?
We worked with therapists from the very first day, watched what they did and created the games based on the patient’s activities.
We made a rowing game where the player looks at the screen, they’re engaged, they’re watching the oars go into the water and hitting the targets. They’re putting in thousands of repetitions, without really knowing that they’re doing it, which is sort of the secret in what we do.
The gamification is an important element because it doesn’t matter if you’re six, 60 or our oldest patient who I think is 97. People like to play games. This idea of rewarding a job well done – people take to that.
Did you talk to patients as well as therapists when developing the games?
We started off creating these virtual environments like a boxing ring or a magnificent gym that removes the patients from their day-to-day.
But they came back to us and said, that’s all good. However, I’m not going to be boxing any day soon but I am going to need to bring the spoon to my mouth or brush my hair. So can you do more activities that are based around stuff the activities of daily living?
That was really important for us because they’re the end client so they should be part of the solution.
So what have you got planned for 2022 and beyond?
The idea is to continue to work on improving our products because tele rehab is all very new. We’ve been getting amazing feedback from patients and therapists in terms of what works and what we can improve upon.
There’s also the healthcare model to think about. Are we saving money? Are we improving quality of care? So that’s something that we’re working on as well.
We’ve got some several really interesting projects around tele rehab in the UK.
We were recently notified that we had received a grant from the Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) for stroke technology. So we’re going to be working with our clinical partners, including Queen Square and the NIHR Brain Injury MIC in Cambridge, so that’s really exciting for us.
We’ll also be doing a lot of work with Microsoft around the world, not only for stroke, but for a lot of other tele rehab.
We’re doing projects everywhere from Singapore to Canada and the United States and hopefully working with Microsoft Europe as well fairly soon.
How will COVID and the growth of telerehabilitation change healthcare in the UK?
I think even before the pandemic hit, NHS realised that the model was already in trouble. COVID just shoved it off a cliff.
The NHS is proactively looking for solutions that will take the burden off the hospital setting and help patients become active members of the delivery of care into the home. Everybody wins in that situation.
In stroke rehab quite often, patients were quite passive. They would go to a place, they would do exercises, but only because they were told to do them. It wasn’t really on their own terms.
You’ve got an hour with the therapist make the most of it and then you go back home. They’ll give you some exercises on a photocopy that you may or may not do.
I think this will change the way patients have to think about the delivery of care now that they’re now an active participant in that.
I think that’s only going to reap benefits for the NHS and for the patients themselves.
How do you see your role in healthcare in the years ahead?
We always talk about us being a bridge between patients and healthcare providers. We’re just trying to make sure that that bridge is really robust, you can get across it as fast as possible and that it goes both ways.
It’s a really exciting time and the UK is pioneering this whole movement towards telecare. We’re happy to be part of that.
