Medical Device Daily

DÜSSELDORF, Germany – Motion detecting is more than just fun and games.

The technology behind the popular Wii from Nintendo is "pretty lightweight technology," according to Marc Attia who directs sales for Movea (Grenoble), who suggests there is a lot more science, and especially clinically useful information, that can be extracted from monitoring the activities of patients.

Movea holds an interest in the Wii game as it acquired the developer of the motion sensing technology that licensed the patents to Nintendo, Gyration (Saratoga, California).

Yet the Movea is ready to play at a new level with the SmartMotion Development Kit it launched during the world's largest medical trade fair held here last week.

Smart Motion is a software development platform that allows original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to integrate motion sensors into diverse products for obesity prevention, for functional physical therapy, such as the measurement and diagnosis of joints, for biofeedback, such as estimated calorie burn, for sleep analysis, and for monitoring the elderly patient in home care or long-term care facilities.

The SmartMotion software engine includes sensor fusion algorithms that are "sensor agnostic," according to Attia, capable of precisely measure and record body movements regardless of the tiny wireless, and therefore wearable, micro electro mechanical system (MEMS) being employed.

Movea offers an advanced sensor for integration, of course, the MotionPod, a wristwatch-sized device to rapidly integrate and customize the use of wireless multi-sensors in their applications.

It also includes a companion application, the MotionDevTool that has an intuitive graphical user interface for real-time visualization and integration.

"We have more serious science behind motion detectors than scoring points on a game," said Attia, calling up a graphical interface for clinicians that extracts specific activities, such as sitting, walking or lying down, and critically, an activity called "transfer" when a patient changes position that is the most intensive with the use of muscles and the resulting burning of calories.

Human body orientation and precisely quantified motion measures combined with other body-worn sensors for blood glucose, oximetry or heart rate, can remotely provide a wealth of data about a patient's condition.

A first customer for the SmartMotion kit is RM Ingénierie (Rodez, France) that uses MotionPod in its BioVal, a module that allows physical therapists and doctors to quantify joint function, as well as enhance and monitor physical therapy activity with biofeedback game exercises.

The exercises pathology-specific analysis on BioVal make it possible configure rehabilitation programs with feedback, feed-forward visuals and audible warning alerts that frees up physical therapists from repeated tasks while giving patients self-directed programming for re-education.

The BioVal was developed in partnership with the Motion Lab from the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) in Grenoble where 10 researchers focus on product development for Movea.

Movea serves as the technology transfer partner for the CEA, one of France's leading research laboratories (Medical Device Daily, March 21, 2007).

Another early adapter of the SmartMotion kit is CIU Santé (Nice, France), a consortium of leading French companies and research institutes that has integrated the Movea technology into products to clinically validate a rehabilitation and activity monitoring system for seniors focused on monitoring for dependence by analyzing the quality and quantity of physical daily activity.

"Monitoring senior activity includes a lot of subcategories for study that are the subject of a series of clinical trials underway at this moment," said Attia.

Back to the realm of fun and games, earlier this year Movea signed an agreement for joint development of monitors for sports activity with Oxylane (Villeneuve d'Ascq, France), the €4 billion ($6 billion) retail distributor that designs in-house its own products

Movea marketing director David Macias said, "We are going to being doing a lot with Oxylane in developing motion sports and motion life style with greater sophistication and accuracy than consumers are familiar with though computer game programs."

"Motion sensing is a crowded space on the high end where the product configurations are not user friendly and not mobile," said Macias.

"We enter this space with a core capability for world class research with Movea and the heritage of Gyration for developing low-cost consumer products," he said.

"Together this creates opportunities for more advanced but more affordable applications in healthcare," he said.

Founded in March 2007 by a team of researchers from the CEA, Movea raised €7 million in its first financing round, enabling the acquisition of Gyration.

Attia said the company will seek a second financing round in 2010 and also will launch a third generation version of its MotionPod.