Long before a doctor makes a formal diagnosis, the way a person walks — their gait — can provide clues about emerging disease.
For conditions like Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s, peripheral artery disease and more, gait changes serve as an early warning sign. But clinicians often miss these signals because gait — often called the “sixth vital sign” — is difficult to measure and often overlaps age-related changes.
Harnessing the power of gait as a biomarker is the concept behind Grasshopper Health, a startup launched by University of Nebraska–Lincoln engineer Fadi Alsaleem to commercialize a wearable, low-cost medical device that continuously delivers gait data to a patient’s smartphone and a provider’s chart. The goal of this device — called the Axis Patch — is to pave the way for earlier diagnoses, improved treatments and better tracking of how well certain interventions, like medicine or surgery, are working.
