SBIR Fast-Track: Home-Based Stroke Rehabilitation: Researching and Developing the Bluetooth Electromyography-Based StrokeTherapeutic (BEST) System

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is an automated remote stroke rehabilitation based on physiologic feedback for enabling optimal and broader access to patients. Stroke often causes persistent motor impairment in millions of individuals who frequently face barriers to regular, in-person rehabilitation to cost, distance, or limited availability of services. This project aims to develop an affordable, home-based rehabilitation system integrating wearable muscle sensors and interactive exercises to assist training muscle movement and restore patient movement and independence. The approach poses the potential to improve quality of life, reduce healthcare expenses, and extend rehabilitation access to underserved populations, including those in rural or low-resource areas, by enabling high-quality feedback-guided therapy at home. The commercial potential and primary customer is 675,000 patients who experience a stroke each year and live with hemiparesis, a condition that affects movement and strength on one side of the body, with potential use in the amount of 8M people post-stroke in the US. This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project aims to design and validate a novel EMG muscular feedback based rehabilitation system that integrates a novel sensor-embedded textile to deliver real-time biofeedback during therapeutic exercises. The system aims to provide a reusable fully embedded electrode system tailored for the specific targeted muscle and activities versus current general single-use adhesive-based skin electrodes. During this project, the electrodes will be engineered to measure the electrical excitation of superficial muscles during dynamic activities, connected to the garment’s built-in sensors to track muscle activity. The integrated worn system will be coupled to an external system and application to guide patients through various rehabilitation activities that promote proper muscle use and motor recovery. The technology development objectives in this phase are to refine the wearable electrode system for comfort and accuracy, integrate adaptive feedback that adjusts to the user’s progress, and validate the system’s usability and effectiveness in people post-stroke in order to ensure the integrated textile-embedded EMG system achieves a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) ≥ 40 dB with <5% signal degradation under repeated stretch and wash cycles, while maintaining <100 ms end-to-end processing latency. The anticipated outcome is a validated EMG sensor prototype that supports motor function recovery, encourages regular practice, and enables remote monitoring for integrating into the company’s proprietary integrated rehabilitation system to undergo clinical validation at a future date. 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. NSF Award ID: 2507703 | Program: 01002627DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT | Principal Investigator: Jasper Mark | Institution: IMPULSE WELLNESS LLC, RALEIGH, NC | Award Amount: $304,997 View on NSF Award Search: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/show-award/?AWD_ID=2507703 View on Research.gov: https://www.research.gov/awardapi-service/v1/awards/2507703.html