HAYLEY Warren is looking forward to getting her digital physiotherapy tool to market after winning the ‘start-up category’ of the WA Innovator of the Year Awards.
HAYLEY Warren is looking forward to getting her digital physiotherapy tool to market after winning the ‘start-up category’ of the WA Innovator of the Year Awards.
Ms Warren created the HALO goniometer, which measures a patient’s range of motion, while still a physiotherapy student at Curtin University.
Frustrated with the inaccurate and outdated tool used for measuring angles, she started working on an idea to create a digital, laser-based goniometer in 2008, and patented the idea in May 2009.
“There’s 40 years of evolution, really, between (the old tool) and HALO,” Ms Warren said.
“It’s just a gap that I identified, and the more I talked to people the more it sounded like a good idea and it started from there.”
HALO uses lasers instead of plastic arms to measure limb angles, and the longer sightlines make for a more accurate reading. Trials have shown HALO has less than one degree of inaccuracy, compared to the current tool’s 30 to 40 degrees.
Using her savings and some investment from family members, Ms Warren worked with local design firm Spring and Logicom Electronic Engineers to put together a prototype, which was released in May this year.
Ms Warren won $25,000 cash and $25,000 worth of legal, corporate and marketing support and advice.
“I’m so excited about the award. It means that HALO really has a chance to get to market a lot faster and a lot more easily,” Ms Warren told WA Business News.
“I don’t have to think about the cents so much now, I can really just go and get the advice I need.”
Trials are currently under way at Edith Cowan University and Curtin University, and Ms Warren is also in talks to trial HALO on the east coast, at James Cook and Monash Universities.
After appearing on ABC program ‘The New Inventors’ in September this year, Ms Warren was approached by professionals from outside the physiotherapy industry also interested in trialling the device, including surgeons, veterinarians and bike manufacturers.
A canine trial is also under way, and Ms Warren is using feedback from the trials to refine her prototype.
She plans to launch the product onto the market by mid next year, following a final trial involving 10 cross-industry professionals.
For now, Ms Warren plans to use her Innovator Award prize to access more information about restructuring the company to facilitate investment.
“I’ve had two angel (investor) networks approach me, which is great, but that’s only new and I maybe need to devise a bit of a share plan to get that going,” she said. “The beauty of the award is that I can now sit down with someone who knows about this stuff and really get going.”
Ms Warren’s goal is to finish her studies and use the revenue generated from HALO to establish a chain of physiotherapy practices under the name of her company, Firstphysio.
