A day to remember for Balance Metrix

Another healthcare inventor and I have teamed up!

Today is a very important day for Balance Metrix. It’s the launch date of our StandSure – BalanceMore rehabilitation kit. And it also happens to be Remembrance Day. The eleventh day of the eleventh month in the year of two thousand and twenty-four.

I am so excited to be teaming up with another healthcare product creator – London-based chartered physiotherapist Ashley Shepherd (pictured with her product below) – to cross-promote our inventions in Australia and the UK.

When Ashley and I first met on LinkedIn and later Zoomed with my partner Margaret Metz we realised that the similarities between our two new healthcare products were uncanny. Both focus on the feet. Both focus on balance improvements. Both fall into a “niche” category of healthcare.

While the Balance Mat enables “nuanced” healthcare, the StandSure is delivering “niche” healthcare in a previously unimaginable market sector to me – paediatric and neuromusculoskeletal physiotherapy. Wow!

Promoting the two products together as one “kit” and individually from the StandSure and Balance Metrix websites is creating a powerful synergy. Just this morning – Remembrance Day on 11 November 2024 – some of Ashley’s neurophysiotherapy colleagues in the UK invited me to connect with them. And that was even before we’d announced the partnership formally.

I’m actually going to stop writing now because it’s 10:59am and I want to observe a minute’s silence to remember those who have fallen during wartime in our shared history. As the son and brother of two former Australian soldiers – Donald Bergman OAM and Major David Bergman – I acknowledge and commemorate all Australian and British soldiers and their families for their service and sacrifice.

It’s now 11.30am and commemorations at the Australian War Memorial that I viewed on ABC TV have concluded. It’s reminded me that my brother David Bergman is transitioning into retirement from the Army at the moment and once that process is complete he intends to show the BESS Balance Mat around to sports clubs in Victoria as a concussion scoring tool. He’s developed a keen interest in the system and a passion for helping players avoid brain injury. I just realised that the Balance Mat has hijacked the narrative (it tends to do that sometimes). What I want to talk about today is the StandSure sit-to-stand therapy tool.

What is StandSure?

The StandSure^TM rehabilitation tool has been developed for therapists working in neuromusculoskeletal rehabilitation. Ashley explains: “It is a foot board into which clients have their feet secured with comfortable ankle and toe straps. Its purpose is to keep the feet grounded during seated, standing and sit-to-stand therapy. It is useful for people of all ages and can be used on a wide variety of neuromusculoskeletal conditions such as cerebral palsy, stroke, dementia, developmental delay, dystonia, post-surgery rehabilitation and tiptoe walking.”

She has likened her invention to “an extra pair of hands” – a role historically undertaken by a second person sitting on the floor. The idea for the product formed when she was working with a stroke patient in their home. The client’s husband was tasked with sitting on the floor holding her hemiplegic foot on the ground. One day he suggested that nailing her foot down would be easier. It led Ashley to wonder how that could be achieved humanely. Ten years later, after working with designers, engineers and the technology institute at Coventry University, her fully-fledged StandSure^TM product was born.

She says, “Despite its simplistic appearance, it took years of prototyping and testing to find the right materials that were lightweight yet stable, create a design that was practical to use in most settings, as well as hygienic, and basically something that would not crack if you accidentally ran a wheelchair over it!”

StandSure^TM is manufactured in the UK by RMS and Ashley is now selling it directly from her own e-commerce website: https://standsureonline.co.uk

What is BalanceMore and how does it fit in?

Ashley says: “We have empirical evidence to show that StandSure^TM improves clients’ sitting and standing balance, and their ability to walk, but until now we haven’t had the technology to easily measure this. The Balance Mat fills a gap in our ability to measure progress.”

“The subject of balance ability is very topical at the moment here in the UK. Only last Saturday the Daily Mail newspaper published a story about some research entitled: “The standing on one leg test that could reveal if you’re at risk of dying within 10 years.”

“I’m excited to have a Balance Mat here in the UK for the neuromusculoskeletal rehabilitation community to use. The Neurometric Balance Mat arrived at my home via Australia Post several weeks ago. While it’s also quite simplistic-looking, it’s actually very sophisticated balance measurement technology packaged into the size and shape of a front door mat!”

When I began researching Ashley’s invention I read an almost Biblical story (shades of “take up thy bed and walk”). A four-year-old boy named Brandon – one of Ashley’s clients (pictured) – could not stand or walk independently due to a rare neurological condition (called bilateral perisylvian polymicrogyria, a brain deformation of the cerebral cortex causing global developmental delay). After four weeks of daily therapy using the StandSure^TM Brandon could stand for six-minute intervals at a time. After a longer period of using it as part of everyday therapy (28 weeks), Brandon could stand and take steps independently and, later, manage a little run.

Brandon’s Mum Stephanie is quoted on the StandSure^TM website (https://standsureonline.co.uk) as saying: “We have been trying different ways to successfully make him stand on his own by holding his hand or holding an object, but it just doesn’t give him comfort. With StandSure he can free stand watching his favourite cartoon. It is huge progress! I am positive!”

Helping one child helps the world

When I read this miraculous story I decided then and there that team Balance had to do everything we could to help Ashley promote her invention because if you help one child, you help the world.

And so the StandSure^TM – BalanceMore rehabilitation kit was born, not only because Margaret, who has a writing and poetry background, liked the name because it’s catchy and it rhymes, but because of the testimonials, the videos and the field report that all supported Ashley and her product’s credentials.

I have developed the “BalanceMore” part of the kit based on the standard balance tests Ashley normally does with her neuromusculoskeletal therapy clients depending on their age and level of ability. The BalanceMore is a 6-in-1 electronic balance testing device that measures clients’ postural sway in a series of repeatable 20-second tests. The higher the movement, the worse their balance is. The technology captures and saves the results online so that any balance improvements can be quantified as part of a rehabilitation program.

The customised tests for the StandSure – BalanceMore kit are: normal and feet together stances with the person’s eyes open and closed, then the left foot and right foot stances with the person’s eyes open.

We’re both taking orders now!

You can now order a StandSure – BalanceMore rehabilitation kit from either of us, in the UK or Australia.

You can buy the StandSure^TM individually from the StandSure website and you can buy individual Balance Mat models from the Balance Metrix website. Or, for a 40% discount, you can buy the StandSure – BalanceMore rehabilitation kit from us (via order form and invoice) or from Ashley Shepherd direct. Just email or call me ian@balancemetrix.com.au, mob. +61 (0)457 123 852; my partner Margaret Metz margaret@balancemetrix.com.au, mob. +61 (0)418 577 746); or Ashley Shepherd (info@standsureonline.co.uk, mob. +44 (0)7425 463 828.

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