What started as a tragic accident has led to the creation of a device with the potential to help millions.
After suffering a motorcycle accident that left him an amputee, Herbie Kirn turned his tech and engineering expertise towards the medical device industry. Since the accident left him with one leg, he found himself going to physical therapy where electrical currents were used to help contract the knee muscle to help with recovery. However, since much of his weight was being born by one knee, he soon found himself needing surgery for knee osteoarthritis. And he began to wonder if physical therapy techniques could be incorporated into everyday life.
And Dallas-based medical device startup Articulate Labs was launched.
“Seemingly all industrial societies are kind of disconnected from their bodies. If you have a flat tire on your car, you don’t drive on it for 500 miles, you handle it right then and there,” Josh Rabinowitz, Articulate Labs co-founder and CEO told NTX Inno. “If you have something on your physical person that is malfunctioning, we tend to do the exact opposite.”
Kirn had entrepreneurial experience, having founded Austin-based audio system interface startup JAM Technologies, which went on to raise about $15 million. Nonetheless, the first launch of Articulate in 2012 ended in failure.
The company had an unsuccessful attempt to bring its technology to market in 2015 and hit pause on the project. Then, in 2017, Rabinowitz joined as CEO and Articulate was accepted into the Dallas-based Health Wildcatters 2017 cohort. Now, recently joining the Capital Factory accelerator program, Articulate has been gaining momentum with new tech and a changed health care market for another launch.
“That really kind of got the ball rolling in terms of me really starting to own everything that needs to be done for this organization and to really start moving forward,” Rabinowitz said. “We’ve been promising people for a while now that were going to get this device onto the market and get it onto people’s knees so that they can overcome whatever limitations they have and move the way they want to, and were going to do that hell-or-high-water.”
Articulate Labs focus is on developing, testing and bringing to market its KneeStim device, which incorporates neuromuscular electrical stimulation, motion tracking software, machine learning and a proprietary joint modeling system into a wearable device around a patient’s knee. The device synchronizes with a person’s movement, giving that same electrical current provided by physical therapy treatment into nearly any motion.
“Going up and down stars, walking your dog, shopping for groceries – we’re helping turn every movement into a muscle strengthening, muscle reeducation opportunity,” Rabinowitz said.
Since its re-launch, Articulate Labs has been steadily honing its skills. In 2018, it was part of the TMCx accelerator in Houston. And, in addition to its recent acceptance into Capital Factory’s program, the three-person team is also pitching to join Houston’s MassChallenge Texas. So far, it has raised more than $545,000 through Health Wildcatters and personal investments from Rabinowitz and Kirn.
The company now has partnerships with the Dell Medical School at UT Austin and UT Health in San Antonio to help further develop its product. It also recently received its first international patent through the European Patent Organization in the UK, France and Germany.
“We’re always working through how to make this bigger and better… and get it to the point where you almost have no choice but to support it,” Rabinowitz said. “We’re very happy to show up at any accelerator, incubator, startup focused program and be up front about the things we could be doing better, and that’s been a great way for us to steadily build up our team, build up our competencies, build up our business, build up our network.”
Part of why Articulate sees this new launch being successful is due to recent advancements in medical device technology. In addition, Rabinowitz said the new normal created by the pandemic provides an opportunity for more use of its KneeStim device due to more people looking for contact-less care and many looking to delay non-essential procedures – something he said he sees continuing into the future.
He said overall the company itself hasn's been impacted by the pandemic, as the team is used to working virtually. However, he added that like all startups it has caused them some difficulty in fundraising.
“We’ve been through worse and we’ve come out better for it, and we fully expect to do the same here,” Rabinowitz said.
Currently, Articulate Labs is planning regulatory trials, with the hopes of getting clearance to test the product. Rabinowitz said the company is looking to do a soft launch of the product in Texas late this year or early next year, after which it will be looking for orthopedic doctors and physical therapist to partner and test the device with. Depending on that, Articulate hopes to begin looking for more funding to scale sales and add more marketing.
And the startup doesn’t intend to stop with just the KneeStim. It hopes to develop future devices for nearly every joint, which would allow it to create a coordinated network among the devices to help treat more complicated issues like stroke recovery or multiple sclerosis. Rabinowitz also said he sees the company entering other verticals like sports medicine and space health.
“Why is there like an hour half-hour drive for me to come in and move my leg in time with this electrical stimulation device, when I’m going through these same motions though everyday activity?” he said.
