A Medical Device Daily

HealthSouth (Birmingham, Alabama), a provider of inpatient rehabilitative services, and Motorika (Mt. Laurel, New Jersey), a private, emerging company in robot-assisted therapy, have signed an agreement intended to advance the application of technology in HealthSouth’s inpatient rehab hospitals. The companies will integrate their respective technology platforms, collaborate on clinical research and publications, establish new data collection and clinical practice standards, and create new products for robot-assisted therapy in the home in an effort to advance the use of technology in providing enhanced rehabilitative care to patients.

Motorika will have the exclusive license to market and sell the AutoAmbulator, HealthSouth’s robot-assisted gait therapy system and will assume responsibility for the manufacture, design, installation, maintenance, technical support, training and distribution of the machine.

With more than 80 AutoAmbulators already installed, HealthSouth said it would continue to implement this technology in its current and future hospitals. In addition, HealthSouth will install Motorika’s Reo Go platform for robot-assisted arm therapy in at least 25 of its hospitals as the company continues to make investments in technology as a rehabilitative tool to maximize the clinical outcomes for its patients.

The AutoAmbulator is a robot-assistance machine intended to assist clinicians in providing interactive therapy to their patients. It is designed to allow patients with neurological conditions such as stroke, multiple sclerosis and spinal cord injury to replicate a normal walking pattern on a treadmill in a safe, efficient manner as part of their rehabilitation.

Omer Einav, Motorika’s founder/COO, said, “HealthSouth and Motorika will create a new standard of care for neurological patients, with an integrated full body solution that enables precise levels of functionally-oriented therapy to deliver better patient outcomes.”

HealthSouth and Motorika said they also plan to create a center of excellence to demonstrate best practices of robot-assisted therapy technology for rehabilitation services.

“As the largest provider of inpatient rehabilitation in the country, we’ve long felt an obligation to take a leadership role in developing technologies — like the AutoAmbulator — to help our patients recover,” said Dexanne Clohan, MD, HealthSouth’s chief medical officer, who will join Motorika’s scientific and medical advisory board. “This agreement with Motorika takes our commitment to technology even further — pairing our clinical expertise with their experience in designing and marketing robot-assisted therapy tools. This arrangement gives our physicians and therapists a unique combination of new techniques to help patients.”

According to Motorika, Reo Go is a comprehensive therapy platform, which includes a robotic guide and modular handle, easy to use software to customize exercise patterns and measure performance, and other accessories to enhance and support the patient experience. The technology was initially developed in Israel. Reo Go is a Class II Exempt device and was introduced to the U.S. market in 2006.

In other agreement news: Dade Behring (Deerfield, Illinois) and Novation (Irving, Texas), the healthcare contracting services company of VHA and the University HealthSystem Consortium (UHC), reported a three-year agreement that provides Novation’s 2,500 members with access to all of Dade Behring’s chemistry products. The agreement also includes an option for a two-year extension.

Novation alliance members will have access to Dade Behring’s full line of Dimension chemistry systems, including the recently introduced Dimension Vista 1500 Intelligent Lab System. In addition, Novation alliance members will have access to Dade Behring’s scalable automation systems — the StreamLAB and Dimension Lynx analytical workcells. The Stratus CS Acute Care Diagnostic System and the Syva drug testing and plasma protein product lines are also included in the agreement.

Dade Behring and Novation also have pre-existing agreements for Dade Behring’s MicroScan microbiology products, coagulation products and the PFA-100 System, which is used for automated platelet function testing.