Robocop? No, Lifebloom! The French medtech company presents its exoskeleton which allows people in wheelchairs to regain the use of their legs. A project combining effective rehabilitation and regaining autonomy. The founder, Damien Roche, was the guest of The France of tomorrow.
After 6 years of development, and 3 million euros of investment, the company Lifebloom has developed a therapy allowing patients to get up and walk safely. It is made up of exoskeleton chairs, interconnected technologies, autonomous sensors, but also an augmented care web platform.
For Damien Roche, the trigger came from a personal experience: « and proche who suffered a serious accident while trying to get out of his wheelchair »et « a physiotherapist friend who was frustrated at not being able to mobilize his patients outside of the session”. According to the entrepreneur, among the 132 million people who live in wheelchairs in the world, “ the vast majority still have some use of their legs, they lack the strength or balance to be able to get up and walk safely”.
A serious alternative to wheelchair placement
The idea behind Lifebloom is to offer an alternative to being placed in a wheelchair, and above all another rehabilitation solution, in order to allow certain people to gradually regain walking, preserve their autonomy and stay in better shape: « on responds to a plague. We have created therapeutic progress, in the face of the aging of the population, but also the shortage of caregivers and the explosion of health costs”.
Tested on patients from the Pitié-Salpêtrière rehabilitation center, the innovation had very promising clinical results, allowing all the subjects monitored to recover walking in less than a week and to multiply their daily time spent by 6 standing. In addition to helping patients, data on progression to caregivers is communicated, allowing follow-up with adapted self-rehabilitation content: “Each patient will be able to be prescribed this therapy and rehabilitated everywhere, all the time.”
Ambitious challenges: equipping medical centers and then the general public
The challenge for Lifebloom is now to develop the equipment of hospitals and rehabilitation centers, “ several dozen health establishments will be equipped with walking units next year so that every patient can have the therapy”with a long-term objective: to equip the general public by 2026.
But at what cost? Damien Roche would like the cost per month to be three times less than that of a person in a wheelchair, and count on public support: « NOur objective is to create 3 times more value than its cost for the health system and to access care that will allow everyone to have access to it. We hope for full reimbursement on this solution given the benefits provided for each person who can live upright instead of confined to a wheelchair.”
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Lifebloom’s ambition is also international, looking for investors to develop the project and take it beyond French borders: « we repeatond to a global issue, which is not simply French. We want to raise several million euros to accelerate and allow everyone to have access to it at the lowest possible cost”.
Francois Pares
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