Kiio Inc has recently enrolled the first human subjects to participate in a Department of Defense-supported project to develop and validate a protocol to assist with the treatment and risk assessment for chronic tendinopathy. The $1.3 million, multi-year, multi-institutional project is being performed to test a technology, which, according to the company, combines the Kiio Sensor with a software application that automatically guides the administration of the protocol and calculates and compiles complex muscle performance metrics. “Our goal is to provide a fast, cost-effective, portable protocol to inform treatment, determination of work-readiness, and prediction of injury for Servicemembers as well as the general population,” says Kiio CEO David Grandin in a media release from Madison, Wis-based Kiio Inc. The technology was developed in collaboration with Patrick Grabowski, MPT, PhD, from the University of Wisconsin – La Crosse. The aim of the project, directed by John Wilson, MD, MS, is to test the technology with 318 human participants. “Chronic tendinopathy is one of the most common musculoskeletal diseases,” Wilson states. “There is currently no efficient, standardized, objective method to quantify tendon performance, and this is a significant limitation in our ability to assess treatment efficacy.” A research team led by Kathryn Roach, PT, PhD, at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine will then perform the data analysis and modeling. “The Kiio technology is able to quickly capture a tremendous amount of highly-accurate data,” Roach explains, in the release. “We will be analyzing this data to establish a normative database and generate a decision-making algorithm that can be utilized not only in treatment, but also in risk assessment and injury prevention.” This work is supported by the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs, through the DoD Joint Program Committee 8/Clinical and Rehabilitative Medicine Research Program Neuromusculoskeletal Injuries Research Award under Award No W81XWH-16-1-0789, according to the release. [Source: Kiio Inc]