I hope you can hear me.
I have a presentation here and if I find the right button, I can talk about Rewalk, which
is more than walking.
The company Argo Medical Technologies was founded in 1998 and by a tragic accident and
actually coincidence, a very intelligent person called Dr. Rami Gaffer who was an electronics
and physical engineer, had an accident and became a tetraplegic and he was told he would
never walk again and he quickly realized there is no cure, that the search for a cure is
ongoing but what he didn't accept was there was no technology available and in his mind
and with his stubbornness and his creativeness, he said it must be possible to mound actually
motors on legs and allow people to stand up and to walk.
This is the early development of a platform technology and the platform technology currently
allows paraplegics to stand up and walk as you've recently seen or as Florian, one of
the users that is with us, will be demonstrating during this presentation.
What we have is actually a self-initiated walking, it's a gate pattern that you create
as a user, you're in the device, you control the device, you go out of your wheelchair,
you go into your exoskeleton and you decide what happens.
So you're in control of the mechanism, you're independent and you can actually leave the
moment of getting out of a wheelchair and actually walking around again.
It makes use of sophisticated technology and as a small startup, we obviously try to make
use of existing technology as much as possible but the combination of innovation and new
ideas allow us to patent the technology.
So it's a protected design and it's a well sophisticated technology and actually what
is patented is the sensor technology inside the system.
To steer and to trigger the gate, you have to make sure that body movement is translated
into system movement and because you want to keep it simple, you want to make sure that
you have a very small brain that responds to the user and that any user who is a paraplegic
can make simple things working which are actually complicated by itself.
So the tilt sensor technology is kind of the core element of what's functional.
We use normal motors, we use adjusted batteries, we have sophisticated gearing but the software
and the hardware and the sensor technology really makes a difference.
What also makes a difference in this technology is the gate algorithm.
The gate algorithm is not designed for a robot, it's designed for a human being and everybody
in the room has a different gate pattern and with our platform technology, we can actually
design a gate pattern that is adjusted to each individual user.
If it's a 160 meter tall person or a 190 meter tall person, 50 kilograms or 100 kilograms,
everybody has their own gate pattern where you feel comfortable with and that can actually
be adjusted.
So in that combination, actually if you move your body, if you tilt the angle with the sensor
technology and the gate algorithm allows you to walk.
As I said, we can adjust it individually, mechanically to make it fit the size which
is a lot of screws and a lot of sliding mechanisms but also the software and that's unique because
if Ana comes to us or Harold or Florian, everybody has their own wishes and delightful
of how they want to actually walk.
The system allows you to go from sit to stand and then actually more attractive to walk
is to see it in a movie which I have here.
Thank you.
And as you can see, the user is independent, he goes by himself, he can go on even surfaces,
uneven surfaces and a more trained and adapted user can also climb stairs.
So with today's technology, you could argue you can go everywhere and anywhere where an
individual would go in a wheelchair plus up and down stairs.
That allows you to actually take the technology for everyday use everywhere and it means after
you learn to use the re-walk in a rehabilitation center or in a clinic, you can now use it
on a daily basis.
It means you actually keep your quality of life, you keep your condition.
It has an enormous physical impact on your condition, on your overall well-being.
We see an effect on pain reduction.
We see a pattern on body mass, fat decrease.
We see a reduction of spasticity.
We see an increase of bone density.
So the brittleness of bones is actually reworked and psychologically and emotionally, I think
every one of you can imagine what it means that if you're told you'll be sitting in a
wheelchair and now you can walk again, that makes a difference.
We've also in these events, but other events around the world helped us enormous as a startup
company to get the awareness and to raise the funds and the support.
This has been a very costly investment.
In something that 15 years ago, nobody actually was believing in, it was too radical.
If a paraplegic sits in a wheelchair, the medical society was taught at school an indication
that they would never walk again.
And now we're bringing a technology around the corner that actually changes that chapter.
Now it is a rehabilitation opportunity, now it is a medical device, and now there is an
existing technology that takes people out of a wheelchair back on their feet and walking.
So we had Netanyahu looking at the technology together with President Obama, and the last
one kind of helped us that we would probably get FDA release, if not this week, then at
least this month.
We have currently about 800 users that try the technology and actually capable of learning
to walk with the technology.
We have a few in France.
We early in the year had the KAPOP, which is a center in the west near Lorien, actually
do a fantastic job on using the technology for rehabilitation, and on the picture you
see a spread of tall, young, old people that actually are 20, 30, 10 years, 5 years in
a wheelchair and actually capable of standing and walking.
That is for today's world.
Today's world, our focus is at the paraplegic individual, but there's also a future.
We're looking at quadriplegics, we're looking at multiple sclerosis, we're looking at stroke
and CP, both for rehabilitation management of the patient, in a gait pattern and in a
gait rehabilitation, but also for home use and daily use, depending if you can be cured
or if you need a technology for every day.
The platform, the product on the left is existing today.
We're looking at launching and bringing the next generation, which would be more sophisticated,
will go faster, is lightweight, will have volume reduction and sophisticated algorithms
and technology or smaller batteries.
There's a lot of things happening.
And then in the future, obviously, there is next generation developments around the corner.
The market size is enormous and each and all of the individuals that have seen this technology
that sits in a wheelchair, they're all keen of trying and want to get out of the chair
and walking it.
So it has the psychological benefits and obviously the medical benefits and the medical benefits
are studied in a lot of clinical data already.
There is a healthy curiosity by the medical society to review how this technology will
change the quality of life, what medical and physical and conditional and emotional impact
it will have and it does and it doesn't not only increase bone density effect, but also
bowel and bladder effect.
So if you as a wheelchair user take two hours to go to the bathroom, you can reduce that
to 20 minutes a day, that is an enormous increase of quality of life as you can imagine.
Thank you very much for your interest.
