Herbie Kirn started to develop KneeStim to help manage his own rehabilitation. He lost his right leg in a motorcycle accident over fifteen years ago and quickly wore down the cartilage in the knee of the fully intact leg as he relearned to walk. Told he was too young for knee replacement, he was advised to go through all of the conservative options available and found braces, injections, and medications each to have unacceptable drawbacks or side effects.

What did work for him was physical therapy, with an emphasis on quadriceps strengthening, but didn’t have time for all of the rehab he needed without impacting work and family responsibilities. While at PT, he was using a neuromuscular electrical stimulation unit while doing leg lifts and started wondering why this process wasn’t more fully automated. Much of Herbie’s background was in control systems and signal processing used to develop next-gen automotive powertrains.

In the time that has followed, countless hours have gone into programming what would eventually become KneeStim's biomimetic operating system as well as building and testing a wide variety of different form factors. The end result is not only a device we believe will address unmet rehabilitation needs for millions, but also an extensible technology to address a multitude of musculoskeletal disorders and a new class of medical device.