UT-alumnus, former mechanical engineering PhD-student, and BAAT director Gert Nijenbanning is happy with the subsidy of over a million. And yes, somewhat surprised. 'It is a project that should generate knowledge and provide us with a commercial product in four years. At this moment there is nothing, and yet the subsidy agency Senter saw something good in our plans. Wonderful!'
The company will not start completely at point zero. 'We do have an idea, which of course originated somewhere. If you walk around a rehabilitation centre on an afternoon, you can see how labour intensive rehabilitation technology is. A great deal of people are helping people - who, for example, have had a cerebral haemorrhage - using exercise and physiotherapy, to improve how they function. I have enormous respect for that. But the means used often are very basic. And, another thing that struck me, a lot of time is wasted: a patient who has to go to the physiotherapist twice a day for half an hour, is waiting around most of the day. Would it not be possible to do something him or herself, exercises, a training, I wondered?'
But Nijenbanning found out that it was not that simple. Patients tire very easily, even after only one half hour of physiotherapy. Moreover, not all exercises can be done independently, as they may be doing it wrong, force themselves, and go from bad to worse. And yet, Nijenbanning thinks that there are possibilities there. 'I am thinking of the use of a robot arm in certain exercises, for example. Or a virtual reality environment, for certain balancing exercises. Not a big VR-lab like they have here at Mechanical Engineering, but a mobile version of it. You now see physiotherapists working with small balls for eye-hand co-ordination. In all those areas I can imagine solutions that speed up the healing process and do not need as much time from members of staff, which in turn enables them to help more people in the same time.'
Ultimately, the research and test process should result in patentable technology and a commercial product. Like the innovative scoliosis orthosis, developed by Nijenbannig during his PhD-research at the BMTI that is now the pearl in the collection of his new company started in 1999.
This company has six employees at this moment and had a turn-over of 650,000 euros last year. The scoliosis orhosis, which applies the right forces in the right place in patients with scoliosis (a curvature of the back), is a successful article from the BAAT collection and sells well in the Dutch, German, and Korean markets.
