Medical technology: Necessity auntie of invention at Loop+

Two sisters determined to improve the health of their son and nephew have created a global digital healthcare solution.

Kath Hamilton, Evander Conroy, 7, and Clare Conroy with the Loop+-designed wheelchair. Picture: Hollie Adams.

What started as a passion project by two sisters determined to improve the health outcomes of young Evander Conroy is now on the verge of becoming a global digital healthcare solution for wheelchair users.

Clare Conroy was set on improving the health of her son Evander, who was born with a neuroblastoma tumour compressing his spinal cord, and spent years seeking top care in Australia and the US.

Mrs Conroy sought various rehabilitation programs but found there was no proper feedback that would be useful for her son who can’t move spontaneously from the chest down.

There was also no feedback to inform her that the rehabilitation work Evander was doing was helping to manage his health and avoid complications such as scoliosis, pressure sores and pneumonia.

Mrs Conroy wanted a way she could “tell the work we were doing was making gains to his overall health”.

Enter her sister, Kath Hamilton, a digital executive, with a drive to do what she could to help her nephew. Ms Hamilton, who previously worked for Yahoo and Westfield, was living in New York at the time and after finding there was no product on the market to solve their problem she created her own.

In 2016, the digital expert hacked together a little prototype, sewing some sensors on to a pillow case. She posted the product, a sensor pad for the wheelchair, to Australia for her sister to test.

Ms Hamilton said the aim was to measure the overall impact of activity-based therapy and identify actions that helped.

“Families we work with say they lose motivation because they can’t see improvements and that is because it takes years to see it,” she said.

For the first year Ms Hamilton funded work on the prototype, including hiring a sensor engineer to develop the product.

“I wanted to make sure it was a viable business,” she said.

By the end of 2017 she had co-founded the company loop+, taking on the role of chief executive.

The company, which has raised more than $800,000 to date, this week launched a $2.5 million raising to accelerate the product to market.

The product is an activity tracker for wheelchair users that creates a feedback loop with ­carers and clinicians to measure and prevent health risks. A sensor pad sits in the wheelchair connected to a mobile app that tracks what is going on with the person in the wheelchair.

“There is high demand. Everyone we talk to wants it but we have to get it into a manufacturer,” Ms Hamilton said, adding she already had a US footprint through work they had done with three clinics.

“The first market will be in full wheelchair users, at a fixed price. The longer-term business is in subscription of the remote monitoring.”

Australians can apply for the sensor pad through the NDIS and the company also has plans to expand it into aged care.

Mrs Conroy, chief experience officer of loop+, said the technology had made a significant difference in monitoring outcomes for seven-year-old Evander.

“I can see habits he has created that I am trying to work against, the way he sits, or puts his arm down the side of his wheelchair,” she said.

“If he has visibility of that he is more likely to shift those habits rather than from me just nagging.”

Loop+ was this week named as a graduate of MedLab, a mentor-driven accelerator program at deep technology incubator Cicada Innovations.

Ms Hamilton said MedLab had been transformational for loop+, saying it had accelerated its path to market by at least a year.

“It is very difficult for people from consumer tech who have solutions in healthcare to break into healthcare.

“We are missing a lot of very compelling solutions to transform healthcare because of that,” she said.

“MedLab will make a massive difference to enable smart consumer technologies to get into the health system.”