- FIGUR8, a digital health platform for measuring and longitudinally tracking body movement as a biomarker, announced it raised $7.5 million to date
FIGUR8 is a digital health platform for objectively measuring and longitudinally tracking body movement as a biomarker. Using FIGUR8, clinicians can take their clients through an assessment to establish a movement health baseline, diagnose movement dysfunction, identify injury risk, optimize exercise routines, and monitor progress.
And FIGUR8’s highly accurate, cost-effective and portable on-body assessment system was developed in collaboration between Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Sports Science Lab and MIT Media Lab researchers.
FIGUR8’s patented sensor technology quantifies a combination of micrometer precision signals of muscle activity and joint mobility during any movement. And from a single movement assessment, over one million unique data points are produced and instantly analyzed by sophisticated algorithms to generate actionable biomechanical insights for clinicians.
And FIGUR8’s breakthrough technology reduces the cost of state-of-the-art movement testing equipment by as much as 95% and delivers a more effective solution than MRIs and X-rays for screening soft-tissue related symptoms. And FIGUR8 is currently working with elite athletes, teams, training facilities and major occupational and physical therapy clinics. These early developmental partnerships enable FIGUR8 to generate data assets that can be used for clinical studies by major medical centers in areas such as Parkinson’s disease and stroke diagnostics and recovery.
“FIGUR8 is completely unique in its ability to aid clinicians in quantifying mobility health markers captured during any activity,” said FIGUR8 CEO Dr. Nan-Wei Gong. “These assessments highlight the weaknesses and anomalies of body segments, which could be a symptom of an injury, disease, or simply a target for performance optimization.”
FIGUR8 had developed its diagnostics platform through a seed round led by P5 Health Ventures with participation from E14 Fund and other individual investors. In total, FIGUR8’s raised $7.5 million to date.
“Measuring musculoskeletal performance and recovery has historically been limited to visual and hands-on assessments, providing little to no quantifiable data,” added Habib Haddad of E14 Fund. “This limitation makes accurate, large-scale and cost-effective treatment assessments nearly impossible. We believe FIGUR8 has identified a significant technological breakthrough and look forward to advancing the understanding of human movement through the company’s groundbreaking sensor technologies.”
FIGUR8 offers healthcare professionals an advanced movement assessment system designed to be used in nearly any environment without the need for cumbersome and expensive cameras.
Essentially, FIGUR8 combines lightweight, low-profile and highly accurate sensors with proprietary algorithms to map sensor information with the biomechanics of the human body. And the company’s award-winning FlexTech Sensors can be manually applied to multiple body locations in a matter of minutes to collect data unobtrusively.
The advanced movement data – including muscle activation timing and intensity with joint angles, acceleration, and motion in 3D space – is then made instantly available through an easy-to-use web platform.
