Startups

NexStride gadget that helps people with Parkinson’s fight ‘freezing’ attracts $2.8M

Comment

The NexStride device and a picture of it attached to a cane.
Image Credits: De Oro

One of the challenges faced by people with Parkinson’s disease is the possibility of “freezing” during normal movement, causing falls and lack of mobility. Surprisingly, small external cues can help them escape freezes or avoid them altogether — and De Oro has raised $2.8 million to commercialize its NexStride portable gadget, which provides those cues on demand.

The simplest way to understand freezing is that the normal pathway in the brain for your body turning the impulse “walk forward” into actual movement doesn’t activate correctly. This can lead to slow or stopped movement despite willing one’s limbs to move the way they normally do.

Studies have found a surprisingly effective technique for preventing this: cueing. When a person sees or hears an external cue associated with moving forwards, it activates a different pathway for walking forward, breaking the person out of the frozen state.

De Oro’s device provides two such cues. One is a little metronome-like ding that makes the brain think about moving in time with it rather than going step by step. The second is a laser-projected line just ahead of the user’s feet that seems to activate the idea of stepping over or past something rather than just “forward.”

The NexStride attaches to a walker or cane using a little stretchy loop like a bike headlight, with a corded controller that can be put somewhere convenient for the user. Hardware dials on the main unit let them control the volume and tempo of the metronome, and the position of the laser line.

There’s plenty of studies about the efficacy of this approach in the lab, and the company has polled its customers, finding a large majority were able to get around more confidently and with less fear. Clinicians they’ve worked with recommend the device to clients as well as a convenient catch-all way to improve mobility.

Two men using the NexStride with their canes in different locations.
Walter and Richard both found the device very useful in getting around on their own terms. Image Credits: De Oro

There are a few items like this out there, like the U-Step laser and sound equipped walker. But the U-Step is built into the walker itself: a large and heavy item not particularly suited for use outside the home, and certainly not something a person with mobility issues could throw in the trunk. As is often the case with accessibility hardware, there’s a lot of legacy stuff from decades past.

The advantage of the NexStride is it’s self-contained and portable — people often have a favored cane or walker and the gadget can be attached to pretty much anything and switched in a few minutes. “NexStride doesn’t make people compromise on choosing between their favorite mobility aid and having access to these effective visual and auditory cues,” said De Oro founder and CEO Sidney Collin.

Manual operation was a design choice prompted by feedback; users and clinicians recommended it over the automatic approach NexStride first attempted, which would presumably have turned on the laser or sound when the person stopped moving. Turns out people like to be in control — especially people for whom control is an everyday medical issue.

The only sticking point is the retail price: A somewhat eye-popping $500, not yet covered by insurance. While it’s not the most expensive medical or mobility device out there, it’s a little hard to reconcile the sticker price with the device itself, which, although well designed, doesn’t seem particularly exotic or expensive to build.

The company said that it priced the NexStride to be competitive with the other options out there, which it handily outperforms, while also keeping manufacturing in the U.S., which necessarily adds to the costs somewhat.

While full retail sounds like a lot, any veteran can get a NexStride for free from the VA, which is definitely a vote of confidence from an institution that serves a lot of people who need it. And the Parkinson’s Wellness Fund may cover from half to the full cost through grants.

With an aging population that’s healthy and mobile, devices like this may be escaping the likes of medical suppliers and becoming more of an ordinary consumer gadget. After all, Parkinson’s can affect people before even middle age, and you know that demographic will be doing a lot of comparison shopping.

The $2.8 million seed round, which will go toward scaling up De Oro’s operations and getting the device to more people, was led by True Wealth Ventures, with participation from AARP, StartUp Health, Capital Factory, Wai Mohala Ventures, Kachuwa Impact Fund, Barton Investments, HealthTech Capital, Wealthing VC Club, Rockies VC and Mentors Fund. The company raised $1.5 million before this.

The funding and innovation here are a reminder that there are many frontiers on which to found a startup and lots of less visible people and groups who stand to benefit from even ordinary-seeming advances in tech.

More TechCrunch

Zen Educate, an online marketplace that connects schools with teachers, has raised $37 million in a Series B round of funding. The raise comes amid a growing teacher shortage crisis…

Zen Educate raises $37M and acquires Aquinas Education as it tries to address the teacher shortage

“When I heard the released demo, I was shocked, angered and in disbelief that Mr. Altman would pursue a voice that sounded so eerily similar to mine.”

Scarlett Johansson says that OpenAI approached her to use her voice

A new self-driving truck — manufactured by Volvo and loaded with autonomous vehicle tech developed by Aurora Innovation — could be on public highways as early as this summer.  The…

Aurora and Volvo unveil self-driving truck designed for a driverless future

The European venture capital firm raised its fourth fund as fund as climate tech “comes of age.”

ETF Partners raises €284M for climate startups that will be effective quickly — not 20 years down the road

Copilot, Microsoft’s brand of generative AI, will soon be far more deeply integrated into the Windows 11 experience.

Microsoft wants to make Windows an AI operating system, launches Copilot+ PCs

Hello and welcome back to TechCrunch Space. For those who haven’t heard, the first crewed launch of Boeing’s Starliner capsule has been pushed back yet again to no earlier than…

TechCrunch Space: Star(side)liner

When I attended Automate in Chicago a few weeks back, multiple people thanked me for TechCrunch’s semi-regular robotics job report. It’s always edifying to get that feedback in person. While…

These 81 robotics companies are hiring

The top vehicle safety regulator in the U.S. has launched a formal probe into an April crash involving the all-electric VinFast VF8 SUV that claimed the lives of a family…

VinFast crash that killed family of four now under federal investigation

When putting a video portal in a public park in the middle of New York City, some inappropriate behavior will likely occur. The Portal, the vision of Lithuanian artist and…

NYC-Dublin real-time video portal reopens with some fixes to prevent inappropriate behavior

Longtime New York-based seed investor, Contour Venture Partners, is making progress on its latest flagship fund after lowering its target. The firm closed on $42 million, raised from 64 backers,…

Contour Venture Partners, an early investor in Datadog and Movable Ink, lowers the target for its fifth fund

Meta’s Oversight Board has now extended its scope to include the company’s newest platform, Instagram Threads, and has begun hearing cases from Threads.

Meta’s Oversight Board takes its first Threads case

The company says it’s refocusing and prioritizing fewer initiatives that will have the biggest impact on customers and add value to the business.

SeekOut, a recruiting startup last valued at $1.2 billion, lays off 30% of its workforce

The U.K.’s self-proclaimed “world-leading” regulations for self-driving cars are now official, after the Automated Vehicles (AV) Act received royal assent — the final rubber stamp any legislation must go through…

UK’s autonomous vehicle legislation becomes law, paving the way for first driverless cars by 2026

ChatGPT, OpenAI’s text-generating AI chatbot, has taken the world by storm. What started as a tool to hyper-charge productivity through writing essays and code with short text prompts has evolved…

ChatGPT: Everything you need to know about the AI-powered chatbot

SoLo Funds CEO Travis Holoway: “Regulators seem driven by press releases when they should be motivated by true consumer protection and empowering equitable solutions.”

Fintech lender SoLo Funds is being sued again by the government over its lending practices

Hard tech startups generate a lot of buzz, but there’s a growing cohort of companies building digital tools squarely focused on making hard tech development faster, more efficient and —…

Rollup wants to be the hardware engineer’s workhorse

TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 is not just about groundbreaking innovations, insightful panels, and visionary speakers — it’s also about listening to YOU, the audience, and what you feel is top of…

Disrupt Audience Choice vote closes Friday

Google says the new SDK would help Google expand on its core mission of connecting the right audience to the right content at the right time.

Google is launching a new Android feature to drive users back into their installed apps

Jolla has taken the official wraps off the first version of its personal server-based AI assistant in the making. The reborn startup is building a privacy-focused AI device — aka…

Jolla debuts privacy-focused AI hardware

The ChatGPT mobile app’s net revenue first jumped 22% on the day of the GPT-4o launch and continued to grow in the following days.

ChatGPT’s mobile app revenue saw its biggest spike yet following GPT-4o launch

Dating app maker Bumble has acquired Geneva, an online platform built around forming real-world groups and clubs. The company said that the deal is designed to help it expand its…

Bumble buys community building app Geneva to expand further into friendships

CyberArk — one of the army of larger security companies founded out of Israel — is acquiring Venafi, a specialist in machine identity, for $1.54 billion. 

CyberArk snaps up Venafi for $1.54B to ramp up in machine-to-machine security

Founder-market fit is one of the most crucial factors in a startup’s success, and operators (someone involved in the day-to-day operations of a startup) turned founders have an almost unfair advantage…

OpenseedVC, which backs operators in Africa and Europe starting their companies, reaches first close of $10M fund

A Singapore High Court has effectively approved Pine Labs’ request to shift its operations to India.

Pine Labs gets Singapore court approval to shift base to India

The AI Safety Institute, a U.K. body that aims to assess and address risks in AI platforms, has said it will open a second location in San Francisco. 

UK opens office in San Francisco to tackle AI risk

Companies are always looking for an edge, and searching for ways to encourage their employees to innovate. One way to do that is by running an internal hackathon around a…

Why companies are turning to internal hackathons

Featured Article

I’m rooting for Melinda French Gates to fix tech’s broken ‘brilliant jerk’ culture

Women in tech still face a shocking level of mistreatment at work. Melinda French Gates is one of the few working to change that.

2 days ago
I’m rooting for Melinda French Gates to fix tech’s  broken ‘brilliant jerk’ culture

Blue Origin has successfully completed its NS-25 mission, resuming crewed flights for the first time in nearly two years. The mission brought six tourist crew members to the edge of…

Blue Origin successfully launches its first crewed mission since 2022

Creative Artists Agency (CAA), one of the top entertainment and sports talent agencies, is hoping to be at the forefront of AI protection services for celebrities in Hollywood. With many…

Hollywood agency CAA aims to help stars manage their own AI likenesses

Expedia says Rathi Murthy and Sreenivas Rachamadugu, respectively its CTO and senior vice president of core services product & engineering, are no longer employed at the travel booking company. In…

Expedia says two execs dismissed after ‘violation of company policy’