Public Funding for J and M Technologies Ltd

Shoulder replacement surgery is a complex procedure with patients typically staying in hospital for up to 5 days. The shoulder rehabilitation pathway has remained unchanged for years and typically consists of multiple face-to-face appointments with therapists and self-managed, unsupervised rehabilitation. Our UK project team (SME's: J+M Technologies, Marturion Electronics and Deeper Insights and a global medical device company, Smith+Nephew) will revolutionize the rehabilitation pathway for shoulder surgery using their innovative digital technology. Our approach directly promotes self-care and management and will minimise the number of face-to-face interactions between healthcare professionals and patients. Our solution consists of a wearable single-sensor that tracks the frequency, range, and quality of limb movement during post-operative recovery. This will ensure optimal levels of rehabilitation and clinician monitoring, whilst reducing the demand for face-to-face appointments. Wearable technology has already had a significant influence on the fitness industry, with mobile phones, apps, and wearable sensors in widespread use by citizens. Moreover, innovations such as artificial intelligence (AI) are finding new uses in patient self-care and clinical management, enabling the growth of personalized medicine. It would allow sensor data to be combined with existing patient reported outcome measures, e.g. quality of life, level of pain and functional status, aiding clinical decision making and empowering patients. Our unique patented technology allows a single-sensor to monitor multi-planar movements in several orthopaedic joints (knee, hip and shoulder). This will transform patient recovery, reducing patients recovery timescales and associated healthcare costs. Our comfortable, light, and user-friendly sensor is also power efficient, allowing patients to extend wear time up to seven days. Together, we will develop a smartphone app and web dashboard software. This will allow upper and lower limb movement data to be automatically uploaded wirelessly, making it readily available and easy for patients and clinicians to review. Using our wearable single-sensor and rehabilitation app in their home environment, patients will work through daily prescribed exercises at their own pace. This is better for self-management, and reduces travel and the associated carbon footprint. Patients will also be able to log information about pain and discomfort. Physiotherapists can access the dashboard to see exercise progression, which will reduce the need for multiple private and NHS physiotherapy visits. Our predictive analytics platform will automatically extract the main kinematic parameters used for the management of rehabilitation to enable the early detection and intervention of adverse events allowing physicians to prescribe an alternative course of rehabilitation.