Over 36 million Americans had at least one fall last year, costing the US healthcare system $50 billion

Effective physical therapy is an important rehabilitative and preventative measure for healthcare, yet 70% of patients do not complete their care.

Failing to complete therapy puts patients at increased risk of injury, such as accidental falls. Last year, over 36 million Americans had at least one fall, which cost the healthcare system $50 billion to treat. 

Unfortunately, physical therapy to rehab walking relies on outdated tech which neither engages patients nor improves health outcomes. Patients are stuck with treatments that don’t adapt to their needs. Clinicians are limited by tools that don’t provide data about real-world activity.

The pandemic has magnified these problems, especially as neurologic physical therapy has lagged in adopting telehealth solutions.

Digital physical therapy powered by smart therapeutic devices

Evolution Devices' mission is to create accessible innovative technologies to assist and enhance movements. We are revolutionizing physical therapy through our connected digital health platform—starting with walking rehab.

The EvoWalk platform is a digital physical therapy solution built around an AI-powered muscle stimulation device. The EvoWalk device gathers detailed walking data and provides electrotherapy to stimulate muscles at the right time to rehab walking and prevent falls. Patients and their physical therapists use data generated by EvoWalk to set personalized goals and care plans.

Stroke survivor able to lift paralyzed foot with EvoWalk smart stimulation:

As our platform collects more movement data, our vision is to expand our ecosystem of devices and personalized training to not only assist people living with impairment but also train people in quickly learning any new movement.

AI-powered therapy platform for comprehensive walking rehabilitation and fall prevention

The EvoWalk is a smart Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES) device. It externally stimulates the right muscles at the right time to help pick up the foot while walking. To do this accurately, the EvoWalk has a built-in accelerometer and gyroscope which run patent-pending AI algorithms.

The EvoWalk A.I. powers the EvoWalk physical therapy platform. The EvoWalk therapy platform connects patients with Neuro-certified physical therapists who guide patients through personalized care plans enabled by the EvoWalk device.

How the EvoWalk therapy platform works:

Pilot with 3 rehab clinics, 500+ waitlist applicants, 200+ press appearances

We have verbal agreements with two distributors, and we’re in discussions with two large health insurers to include coverage of EvoWalk therapy in their health plans.

We have secured partnerships with university champions—including UCSF Physical Therapy, Northwestern University, and USC, among others. Rehab centers will be the initial introduction point to the EvoWalk for patients who are recently diagnosed with a walking impairment due to neurological trauma. 

Supporting patients with neurological walking impairments

Our initial market focus is on people living with neurological walking impairments. Our novel software and proprietary data will form the foundation of future therapeutic offerings as we expand into adjacent markets, such as geriatrics and sports performance.

Feedback from patients and physical therapists has been positive. 

We have seen up to a 10x increase in activity in our pilots. 

One stroke survivor even walked a 5k using the EvoWalk:

Reliability of our technology—and the comfort of getting treatment from home—have been key contributors to patient success and satisfaction.

Here's what our patients are saying about us:

For the first time, physical therapists can now see actionable patient activity and exercise data, empowering them to deliver higher quality remote care. Being able to see patients’ at-home data leads to more dynamic, personalized treatment that improves patient engagement and outcomes.

Here's what physical therapists have to say:

Health-as-a-Service model

We estimate a lifetime value (LTV) of $4,500 for the average EvoWalk patient, with a customer acquisition cost (CAC) of $750. We anticipate gross margins of ~70% year over year.

The EvoWalk therapy platform includes the device and service. The EvoWalk device will be sold for a fee, which may be covered by insurance (CPT code E0770) or grants from disease societies. Users then enroll in 1 of 4 monthly service tiers provided by our therapy team. 

Our business model is scalable. EvoWalk therapy platform will cost less than traditional care (no offices, no in-person training - higher margins). We require few patients and PTs to scale and expect to reach profitability within 24 months of launching.

Disrupting the $35B Physical Therapy market

Our innovative connected device approach creates a significant opportunity to disrupt the landscape of the physical therapy market. We plan to expand our market presence as we launch solutions for geriatric and other types of physical therapy.

Digital walking rehab solution using A.I. to provide improved remote care

EvoWalk digital therapy program is pioneering remote care for walking rehab. Our innovative AI-powered therapeutic device, the EvoWalk, provides actionable metrics for clinicians. This improves remote care while preventing falls for people living with walking impairments, focused initially on neurologic walking impairments.

Current fall-prevention devices don't use the combination of AI to collect data while also providing active treatment.

Existing virtual care solutions are gaining traction, including Hinge Health ($300M Series D), Kaia ($75M Series C), Sword Health ($85M Series C), and Physera (acquired for $30M by Omada Health). These companies specialize in rehab for MSK issues and do not have the therapeutic remote-monitoring tech to improve at-home care.

We combine both a smart therapeutic device with fully virtual care provided by our neuro-certified specialist physical therapists. In doing so, we can provide excellent personalized care.

Freedom of mobility is a human right

Evolution Devices’ mission is to create accessible and innovative technology to assist and enhance mobility and empower people to move freely. 

We believe freedom of mobility is a fundamental human right. Our vision is to lead the evolution of movement therapy with cutting-edge, affordable technologies enabling anyone, anywhere, to receive personalized rehab care, empowering their independence. Starting with walking impairments from neurotrauma, our vision is to expand our ecosystem to rehab and enhance all types of physiological movements. 

With your investment, you can help us achieve our vision to shape the future of mobility and movement therapy.

Raising $2M

We’ve raised over $1M in funding to date. Notable investors include the Alchemist Accelerator Program and Edge Systems founder Bill Cohen, who led the medical device company to a $150M exit. A large portion of our funding comes from non-dilutive grants from leading institutions, including:

• Toyota Mobility Foundation

• Bristol Myers Squibb

• National Science Foundation

• National Institute of Health

With this fundraising round, Evolution Devices is working towards commercialization at the start of 2022. Our team submitted a non-provisional patent in January of 2020. We will submit for FDA Clearance with a target clearance date in Q2 2022. Our team is a NSF Phase 1 grant recipient, and will be submitting our Phase 2 proposal in September 2021 (with a chance to receive up to $1M in non-dilutive funding). 

We will be scaling to 1000 manufactured devices with 600 paid EvoWalk customers and at least 5 rehab hospital partnerships by Q4 2022.

An award-winning team directly connected to the problem

Our team of neuroscientists, medical device engineers, and neuro-specialist physical therapists have backgrounds from UC Berkeley, Vanderbilt, and UCSF.

Our founders are personally connected to the problem—they were inspired to build Evolution Devices to help Pierluigi’s father, who struggles with Multiple Sclerosis and has since slowly been losing his ability to walk. 

Executive Team

Pierluigi Mantovani (Co-founder & CEO) is responsible for Evolution Devices’ strategy, partnerships, and fundraising. Mantovani is a healthcare entrepreneur and former Neuroscience researcher at UCSF, where he worked in the lab of neurosurgeon Dr. Edward Chang, developing technology and tools to stimulate the brain directly for combatting different neurological impairments. He received his BA in Cognitive Science from UC Berkeley and was inspired to build Evolution Devices to help his father, who lives with Multiple Sclerosis. 

Juan M. Rodriguez (Co-founder & CTO) leads the technical development at Evolution Devices. Rodriguez is an electrical engineer and computer scientist. He received his BS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from UC Berkeley. Juan performed research at Princeton University, where he helped with the development of a large-scale strain sensing system that could be used for health monitoring and to integrate into IoT and smart buildings. Rodriguez has a personal interest in creating technologies that restore and enhance human capability after his grandfather lost mobility on the right side of his body due to a brain tumor.

Pierre Karashchuk (Co-founder & Chief Science Officer) leads the machine learning and computer vision development at Evolution Devices. Karashchuk received his BA in Statistics and Computer Science from UC Berkeley and is completing his Ph.D. in Neuroscience at the University of Washington.