Fielding a question from a judge at the BioInnovation Challenge last year, Graeme Powell hesitated for a second, then said that, no, his company is not just making a walking stick with a bathroom scale in it.
The company, Doctor’s Orders of Fredericton, is designing a “smart cane” to help speed the recovery of people who have had surgery like knee or hip replacements. The design will help individuals accelerate their recovery, and it will also provide the medical community with data that should improve recovery times overall.
“We know from professionals we’ve spoken to that offsetting the correct amount of weight reduces some of the risk of needing another hip replacement,” Powell said in an interview in Fredericton recently.
A team is developing a cane that assesses the weight the user places on it. It means that people recovering from orthopedic surgery can tell how much weight they should place on the cane and can be told when they’re doing it wrong. By applying the correct amount of pressure, patients can reduce complications, and that should result in optimal recovery time. It might also reduce the need for further surgery.
“Approximately 88 per cent of revision surgeries are needed because of some kind of infection in the joint after surgery,” said Powell. “We’re targeting the other 12 per cent.”
What’s more, the device would collect the data and transmit it to the doctor or physiotherapist. That would let them know if the patient is adhering to his or her rehabilitation schedule and adjust it, if necessary.
“Originally, the idea was pretty much making it something like a cane with a bathroom scale in it, but the value we’re finding now is in the data,” said Powell. “There isn’t a retail product out there that provides this data over the full course of rehabilitation.”
Doctor’s Orders grew out of the technology, management and entrepreneurship program at the University of New Brunswick, where the founders all studied engineering. Powell is the company CEO, while his co-founders — Alex Belyea, Kadie Wright and Ghislain Maillet — are pursuing their master’s degrees at the university’s Institute of Biomedical Engineering.
They entered their company in the BioInnovation Challenge, hosted by BioNova, last autumn, and are competing in the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation’s Breakthru competition.
The team so far has made the first iteration of the product and is working with the institute on the second. Doctor’s Orders is also working with Dalhousie medical school’s Saint John campus on clinical trials.
The team plans to seek regulatory approval first from Health Canada and then, after a small introduction in Canada, seek approval from the Food and Drug Administration in the United States. Health Canada classifies the cane as a Class 2 medical device; Powell said approval for such a product could take about one year.
He added that the Doctor’s Orders team believes it needs about $250,000 in seed funding to get through the first regulatory stage.
Powell said the co-founders have plans to make the cane applicable to more than just hip and knee replacement patients.
“We’re focusing on hip and knee replacements now because they have the most data available. But we’re looking at other applications like ankles and (anterior cruciate ligaments).”
Entrevestor receives financial support from government agencies that support start-up companies in Atlantic Canada. The sponsoring agencies play no role in determining which companies are featured in this column nor do they have the right to review columns before they are published.
