Today, 101 million people are stroke survivors. Stroke is recognised by the WHO as a major cause of disability worldwide which requires a spending of $891 billion annually. Around 80% of them present some motor deficits and 25% of these people remain severely impaired, making the performance of activities of daily living impossible. In Switzerland alone, this accounts for around 25,000 people, with 4,000 new patients every year. For this subgroup of patients there is no effective therapy available: patients usually attend traditional physiotherapy and occupational therapy, which helps them remain stable, but they do not gain any improvement. Less standard therapies are often inaccessible or fail to deliver results for these patients, as they usually require a minimum level of mobility.

SaisiR introduces a groundbreaking rehabilitation system to be used in hospitals and rehabilitation centers to help recovery of chronic (6 months post-stroke) severely impaired stroke patients. At the heart of the solution is a computer application that orchestrates a combination of non-invasive neurotechnologies, including a brain-computer interface (BCI) that interprets brain signals (recorded with electroencephalography) to initiate upper-limb movement through a hand exoskeleton and multi-channel functional electrical stimulation. Differently from other BCI-based treatments, therapists can tailor sessions to each patient's specific needs, focusing on individual joints or comprehensive functional movements.The efficacy of SaisiR has been validated in the Avancer clinical trial.

I would like to better understand how these innovative technologies can be translated into the clinical setting, understanding the limitations and restrictions compared to the research setting (e.g., duration of therapy, reimbursement from insurances). I also need to refine the actual product; among others, the current product will need a better user interface, for which it is critical to gather information and feedback from the users (therapists and patients), as well as potential buyers (rehabilitation centers) and health insurance companies. Along with product refinement, I need to understand the willingness to buy (and the pricing model); in this regard, I would also like to understand what are the major differences between big centers and smaller cabinets.