Alastair Monk
$1,000,000
IMMERGO LLC
California
Technology Innovation and Partnerships (TIP)
SBIR Phase II
The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II
project concerns greater affordability, accessibility, and accuracy of physical therapy for patients and
therapists. The product to be commercialized will contribute to developing innovation around immersive
telehealth experiences, exploring the future of work for physical rehabilitation in the metaverse,
establishing standards in embodied telehealth, and grounding novel scientific research methods within VR
for healthcare from a California-based startup with the goal of increasing access to care. Establishing a
remote immersive virtual platform will provide a means for in-patient success metrics and full-body virtual
guidance. Patient throughput potentially could be doubled through remote visits in virtual environments
and automated physical health documentation. The platform will be designed with accessibility in mind
with patients from "medical deserts," where patient care is significantly limited by hospital capacity,
physical distance, doctors per population, and cost. Remote physical rehabilitation tools and predictive
physical therapy analytics will benefit patients without adequate insurance coverage. This technology
could lower hospital visits, enable clinics to remain open during future pandemic periods, decrease costs
for patients and clinics alike, and begin detecting physical health needs earlier to help manage the pace
of recovery.
The proposed project aims to expand a novel physical rehabilitation telehealth solution through the
continued research of an instrumented and gamified immersive virtual reality platform for physical therapy
and healthcare monitoring. This technology addresses the shortcomings of widely used telehealth platforms (often videoconferencing) where therapists find it difficult to perform common evaluations
such as movement abilities and balance coordination tests. The solution will expand upon an embodied
telehealth platform with 3D virtual avatars and predictive AI tools to assess user biomechanics in real-time
extending to full-body assessment while providing normative assessment metrics, creating a goal
standard for remote physical therapy care. The development method will continue to utilize user-centered
design with a panel of therapists to ensure accessibility and usability of the prototype systems by their
relevant stakeholders. Such research will incorporate predictive biomechanical analysis to increase the
reliability and repeatability of physical therapy measures and exercise programs for remote monitoring
at the clinic or the patient’s home. Iterative prototyping with user experience will be conducted to
establish in-patient success metrics and full-body virtual assessment. This innovation will enable greater
affordability, usability, and effectiveness of physical therapy for patients and therapists.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.