iShoe for balance and athletic market

NewsBot · Aug 4, 2008

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The Boston Business Journal are reporting:
Sole searching: Startup's shoe helps spot balance woesCambridge’s iShoe eyes geriatric and athletic markets

Erez Lieberman set out to develop a technology that improves astronauts’ balance. Along the way, he may have stumbled on a breakthrough for the elderly.

Lieberman, a graduate student at the Massachusetts of Institute of Technology, has launched iShoe Inc. — a maker of iShoe insoles that can track and analyze a wearer’s balance and flag potential problems.

“The insole looks like a normal insole, but it has all kinds of electronic gadgets inside of it,” Lieberman said. “Basically what the insole does is track how you’re balancing.”

The concept, which Lieberman first developed last year as an intern for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, could be a positive step toward protecting the elderly from falls, Lieberman said, as geriatric doctors could potentially use the iShoe to gauge patients’ stability while walking or standing. That could lead to corrective therapy to address falls before they happen.

Lieberman is now seeking outside investors to further the iShoe’s development and testing. He has already pocketed $50,000 in grant money from the Lunar Ventures Competition in Golden, Colo., and has an application pending for patent protection. His three-person team, which includes a former NASA post-doctorate student, has developed prototypes that are being tested by 60 people at the University of Houston.

The company has not generated any revenue to date.

The insoles currently are made of polycarbonate and collect data through an implanted wireless radio transmitter. That device measures a user’s gait and sends that data to a Web server that crunches the numbers to determine whether a wearer’s balance is stable.

Laurence Young, a professor with both the astronautics and the health sciences and technology programs at MIT, helped Lieberman develop the technology and said it could have a wide-ranging impact. “I can see it being of interest to the medical community, from the shoe store to the podiatrist to the neurologist,” he said.

It’s not just statistics that motivate Lieberman. His own grandmother died shortly after a fall. So Lieberman, who studies in a joint health-sciences and technology program offered by MIT and Harvard University, said his interest is personal.

“It’s a really interesting concept,” said Gregory Catalano, a podiatrist in Concord. “The question that arises is, how do they apply it in a clinical setting?”

While the iShoe concept is principally targeted toward the geriatric market, Lieberman said it could also be used to correct balance issues among athletes.

But there are already technologies, such as platforms that measure patients’ footing, in the market, said Michael Robinson, a Brookline-based doctor of podiatry that specializes in athletes. All of those technologies can lead to overkill, he said.

“The reason I do not continue to use (a system such as a platform),” Robinson said, “is that it often really didn’t show me anything that my experience in watching someone walk and examining that person’s feet didn’t already tell me.”

But Lieberman said sometimes it’s the simple balance problems that his technology might spot. “Sometimes the source of the problem is a silly thing or a correctable thing.”
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NewsBot · Aug 5, 2008

Here is the MIT Press Release on this from 16 July:
Balance problems? Step into the iShoe
MIT grad student's invention could one day prevent falls

Your grandmother might have little in common with an astronaut, but both could benefit from a new device an MIT graduate student is designing to test balancing ability.

The iShoe insole could help doctors detect balance problems before a catastrophic fall occurs, says Erez Lieberman, a graduate student in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology who developed the technology as an intern at NASA.

Falls among the elderly are common and can be deadly: In 2005, nearly 300,000 Americans suffered hip fractures after a fall, and an average of 24 percent of hip-fracture patients aged 50 and over die in the year following their fracture, according to the National Osteoporosis Foundation.

Lieberman is now testing the iShoe technology in a small group of patients. The current model is equipped to diagnose balance problems, but future versions could help correct such problems, by providing sensory stimulation to the feet when the wearer is off-kilter.

"By doing that we can replace the sense and thus improve people's balance," Lieberman says.

Lieberman and other iShoe team members have applied for a patent on the technology, to be jointly held by MIT, Harvard and NASA. In April, the company won a $50,000 grant from the Lunar Ventures Competition to help with start-up costs.

Lieberman originally developed the technology to help NASA monitor balance problems in astronauts returning from space.

Zero gravity environments wreak havoc on the vestibular system, one of three body systems that control balance. (The others are vision and sensory receptors called proprioceptors, which tell you where your body parts are in relation to other body parts and the outside world.)

"The change in gravity really screws with their sense of balance. They're falling all over the place," says Lieberman, who is a Hertz Fellow and also receives funding from the National Science Foundation and Department of Defense.

The effect usually lasts about 10 days, but NASA tests astronauts' balance for 16 days after their return. Astronauts go into a phone-booth-like box, where they undergo a series of balance tests such as platform shifts and wall shifts.

While at NASA, Lieberman developed a new system for gathering data and an algorithm to analyze the data.

"We've developed the first algorithm that is really capable of not just looking at the pressure distribution of proprioceptors on the feet but also analyzing what that's saying," he says.

Lieberman soon realized that the technology could reach a wider audience than just astronauts. His own grandmother suffered a bad fall several years ago, and he theorized that a balance diagnostic could help doctors catch balance problems before such a fall occurs.

"You have a gradual progression of loss of balance, osteoporosis, and other factors that can lead to the fall," Lieberman says.

The iShoe insole would measure and analyze the pressure distribution of the patient's foot and report back to their doctor. The device could also be outfitted with an alarm that would alert family members when a fall has occurred.

Lieberman and his colleagues are now testing the device in about 60 people, hoping to generate data that will help them create a model to predict the risk of a fall.

Other members of the iShoe team are Katherine Forth, a former NASA postdoctoral associate; Ricardo Piedrahita, a graduate of University of California at San Diego; and Qian Yang, a Harvard undergraduate.
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