ART/Wear

Essential tremor (ET) stands as one of the most prevalent neurological disorders globally, affecting over 400 million individuals. Typically impacting those aged 20 to 60, ET significantly diminishes the quality of life, particularly in fine motor skills control, notably within the upper limbs. This impairment hinders everyday tasks like writing, drawing, and eating, often leading to complications and an increased susceptibility to Parkinson's disease. Traditional approaches for tremor reduction involve invasive measures such as medication, deep brain stimulation, and focused ultrasound via magnetic resonance, alongside emerging electrotherapy treatments.
However, these solutions tend to be either invasive or expensive, with even the most cost effective innovations facing availability challenges, especially in countries in regions such as LATAM .

Recognizing the need for accessible, low-cost solutions, we introduce ART/Wear: A medical wearable device & App that can counteract Parkinson Disease and Essential tremors in a personalized way.

Our solution works based on two concepts: a physical phenomenon called destructive interference and selective compressions. On one hand, employing a pseudo-destructive interference phenomenon, we utilize a series of modulable vibrations to counteract tremor waves. On the other hand, compressions help stabilize joints and muscles to generate a steady pulse and movement of the arm.

Due to the fact that tremor oscillations do not follow a singular pattern between patients, and even vary their magnitude even within a specific individual, we have defined our wearable to be modulable. This implies that the device captures the patient’s inertial movement, axial acceleration, and degrees of motion via gyroscope, and this data are send to an app where the cellphone of a patient will connect through Bluetooth. The patient will be able to modulate the intensity and frequency of the coin motors to adjust his tremor. 

Our mission in ART/Wear is Giving ET and PD patients back their dignity through the autonomy to perform everyday tasks. The direct impact of our solution are 2.5 million colombians, mexicans, americans, and peruvians that are part of the focal groups and clinics with which we have contacts and pilots to begin soon. 

We expect to grow into 32.5 million people in the region of LATAM by 2026 and start exploring the American and European markets. The Total Avalilable Market for this diseases is 400 million people worldwide, we have work to do!

We are three members who have known each other since our first year at university. Our shared passion for solving healthcare problems through biodesign and innovation brought us together to work collaboratively.

Me, Andres Santiago, am biomedical engineering and computer science student at Universidad de los Andes (Uniandes) particularly interested in neuroscience, and have Essential Tremor myself since two years ago. I demonstrate strong leadership, excellent communication skills, and proficiency in various programming languages and electronics. I'm participating and learning in the START fellowship program at St. Gallen, Switzerland, while still contributing to this project.

German, a research assistant and MSc student in biomedical engineering at Uniandes, is known for his strong project management skills and diverse laboratory research expertise, circuits, instrumentation and has an interest in biotechnology, microfluidic and cell engineering.

Finally, Mateo is a biomedical engineer from Uniandes and a Chemical Engineer student at Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Currently pursuing an MSc in biomedical engineering at Uniandes and working as a research and development assistant at the Biodesign, Innovation, and Translational Technology Group (bitt). In this role, he is involved in various healthcare and biodesign projects, while also mentoring students on their design projects, these have allowed him to gain experience in 3D printing, laser cutting, carving, and crafting, besides my skills in Python, Excel and VBA. he is passionate about biotechnology, nanoscience and 3D bioprinting.

We have the honour of being mentored by an incredible and multidisciplinary group of advisors.

- Santiago Sánchez is our strategic advisor, due to his great background and experience in the world of biodesign and innovation in healthcare, we receive a helpful
guide to take our project to the real world. He is the manager of the Biodesign, Innovation, and Translational Technology Group (bitt) at Uniandes and recently
accepted in the MSE Program of Johns Hopkins Center for Bioengineering Innovation & Design. https://www.linkedin.com/in/sa...
- Miguel Vanegas is our financial advisor. His experience as professor, investor, consultant is valuable to know different aspects in the business model and tractions.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mi...
- Thomas Scheub is our clinical advisor. One of our members had the opportunity to know him in Barrow Neurological Institute where he works as a physician. He
gave us the opportunity to meet patients with movement disorders and know their daily struggle with these diseases, besides the current solutions that are used.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/to...
- Roman bianchi is our marketing advisor from START fellow program. He has designed and executed locally and globally (or co-designed) sales and marketing
strategies. His knowledge from the marketing side and the sales side will help us to launch our product in Colombia and Latin America.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ro...
- Yannick Frank is our impact advisor from START fellow program. He has wide experience as a startup mentor and is fueled by a passion for progress. He is also
dedicatet to empowering ambitious founders to deliver solutions that will shape our future for the better. https://www.linkedin.com/in/ya..

We are currently finishing our fourth prototype and MVP while also have validate it with 25 patients and got to a TRL of 7.  Moreover, we are starting our first 100 pilots to achieve TRL 8 and 9 with patients over several countries. This is possible thanks to previous grants we have earned over Chile and Switzerland along with networking events with patients of this communities. 

Our recent experience in Europe has shown us that ART/Wear has potential to help people worldwide since Essential Tremor and Parkinsons are not isolated diseases to our communities.  We are struggling to overcome some technical, financial, and market barriers:

Technical: We need to optimize the circuitry, since we are still facing trouble developing SMD manufactured PCBs. As well as developing the interface between the device and the App.

Financial: We need to build a better business model that can fully cover the dimensions of our solution. Currently we are only considering the COGS and operative costs of the small scale and not placing salaries, we need to understand how does an actual financial plan looks like if we achieve to get funding.

Market: ET/PD are not only problems where we live, thus we want to explore the US and EU markets as ways to help more people to have a better preemptive and corrective treatment of the diseases while also expanding our operations worldwide. 

ART/Wear is a novel medical wearable device for counteracting Parkinson disease tremor (PD) and Essential Tremor (ET) with microvibrations and selective compressions. Our mission is giving ETPD patients back their dignity through the autonomy to perform everyday tasks. The current ETPD market is valued at 128 billion USD from which 10 billion in LATAM are currently not having an effective treatment on the early stages of the diseases due to lack of access to a solution, elevated costs, or systemic toxicity due to pharmacological treatment. 

Our technology would be able to provide an accessible, effective, safe, low-cost, and hollistic solution that provides treatment and actionable insights.  

Our first 100 beta testers will give us insights to further improve the product that allows the device to upgrade and begin earning traction, make academic publications, and earn trust.

When patients purchase our devices, they receive treatment for their condition and acquire a life with more autonomy, dignity, and security.

When clinics and telehealth industries purchase actionable insights from our devices, the gathered information can be used to conduct research and these diseases knowledge increases.

When governments acquire devices to provide mass coverage, patients receive treatment on a massive scale and thus treatment becomes available to everyone. 

Following UN SDG Indicators 3.8.1 and 3.8.2 we will provide a new and better coverage to Parkinson Disease and Essential Tremor with an easy access and low-cost solution.

Moreover, our north start metric is "the number of patients that uses ARTWear" since our mission is giving ETPD patients back their dignity through the autonomy to perform everyday tasks.

By 2030 we will provide access to an effective ETPD treatment to 20 million patients in Latin America.

ART/Wear combines two main components: selective compressions over certain muscles and tendons, and micro vibrations for tremor counteracting.

The solution provides a holistic approach that perfectly couples the performance, comfort and seamlessness of a tailored wearable garment with a mobile app that tracks your tremor progression and provides actionable data insights for each individual patient.

Our product is the combination of the principles of Biodesign from Standford and research on the field from our university, as well as tests over our first cohort of 25 patients (we have reached TRL 7). By the end of the year we will successfully conclude our first 100 testers with our most recent MVP.

Regarding previous research:

https://repositorio.uniandes.e...

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/do...

Regarding our thesis project

https://hdl.handle.net/1992/73317

full-time staff: 2

part-time staff: 1

Advisors & mentors: 5

ART/Wear began with the diagnosis of my disease (Essential tremor) in 2022, since then we developed the first concept and our thesis on 2023. Today ART/Wear is part of the START Fellowship accelerator program on Switzerland.

Our team is currently composed of three Hispanic, Latin American biomedical engineers. We are currently on the look for female and LBTIQ+ co-founders from other disciplines to help us grow as a team.

Into our company guidelines and subsequent hire of the team in the near future there are several policies regarding gender equality, and hiring upon a non-religious and/or cultural background check.

Our potential revenue channels are:

A B2C Freemium model approach of selling the wearable device directly to patients.

A B2B SaaS channel where data can be leveraged for telehealth connectivity or clinical trial monitoring.

A B2G where governments and healthcare providers work as an access channel to millions of patients.

As a go-to-market strategy we will focus on a B2C hybrid model, where patients will make a one-time
hardware purchase of the device, and could engage in a freemium monthly subscription that enables
additional insights and personalized recommendations.
Not only is this revenue model standard within the current wearable market, but it grants us relative initial
compliance flexibility and guarantees a MRR from a hardware product.

ART/Wear has earned up to 37 K USD in grants from the JUMP Chile competition, the START Fellowship IC sessions and kick-off grant, and the Comunidad Bitt research group from the University of los Andes. 

These funds have been used to perform research and development, IP, constitution, branding and the development of the first 100 Pilots of the device which would be distributed freely with a diverse cohort of patients from Colombia and the United States. 

Upon preclinical testing a soft launch will be performed over 2025 on Colombia and Chile with a B2C sales and freemium model with a quality check control on the final quarter of 2025. The official launch, FDA approval and B2B and B2G growth will be performed along 2026.