Why Patient Mobility Needs More Than Another Lift

From the episode captions, lightly cleaned. Speakers are not labeled, and the text may contain small errors. Time links play the episode from that moment.

0:00 In MedTech, the difference between a good quarter and a great one isn't always the product. It's the friction standing in the way. Broken sales cycles, misaligned teams, deals that stall at the finish line. Every leader feels it, and the best ones know how to remove it. Welcome to Zero Friction, the podcast where we go inside the minds of MedTech's top commercial leaders to uncover the real barriers they face, the decisions they make, and the systems they build to keep the revenue moving. I'm your host, Terry Coutsolioutsos. Let's remove some friction.

Well, welcome to Zero Friction. This is Terry Coutsolioutsos. So, I'm glad to have you today, and I have an exciting guest. Her name is Sheila Buswell, and she is the co-founder and CEO of Buswell Biomedical, which is developing and phenomenal technology. It's called UpMo, and it's about upward mobility, and it really is a game-changer when it comes to, you know, people who can't get around and need to be, whether they're in a hospital or a nursing care center. This is a life-changing technology that we're all excited to learn more about.

So, Sheila, won't you tell us a little bit about yourself and your personal journey, and then let us know about UpMo. Thank you, Terry. It's good to be here. Just about myself, graduated from a high school in the West Desert, Utah, Agua Fria High School, and I had graduated third of my class. I was third of my class, and I had a scholarship to the University of Utah that I did not keep, and I ended up joining the US Army. In 1997, I joined the US Army, and in 1998, I deployed to Bosnia. And in Bosnia, I had a generator fall on my foot, and I received a medical discharge for that injury in 2001. And after my injury and my medical discharge, I completed my education, ultimately obtaining a MNet, MS in Engineering, and working for a lot of great companies. And when I was injured in Bosnia, I rehabbed in Bosnia and I at a UN hospital. And then 20 years after my

Injury in 2018, my mom fell in Arizona and she had all the challenges I had and more. And unlike the previous guest, you had Natalia Mammana on here? Yeah. And she would talked about like identifying a problem or no, had she had experienced the problem, but she went to business school and they said the best businesses are, you know, create a solution to the problem. Well, I didn't know that problem existed. I just saw my little mama suffering. Like she had to wait hours for activities of daily living like toileting and it frustrated me and I'm a problem solver, so I'm not a caregiver. I went there every day and just first my in first instinct was to burn that place to the ground. I'm not an arson and I was mean to the care the health care workers. That would really wasn't fair to them, but I realized, "Oh, there's a systemic problem." And then I had worked mostly in automation cuz my bachelor's degree is mechanical

3:00 Engineering and my master's degree is biomedical engineering and I had worked in research and development and automation and I used that knowledge and I was like, "Oh, this this this could be you know, solved. So, I'll just go work for whoever's solving this problem." And then it was a very frustrating thing for me when I found out nobody's working on this problem. 2018, I solved the problem and in that year um did research to find out nobody's working on this problem. It needs to be worked on, gave myself a pep talk, if not now, then when? And if not you, then who? So, I created Buswell Biomedical with my husband, Greg and the rest is history. We've been working ever since. Got a patent and been trying to get funding. We have a full-size prototype and not looking back. We think we know that we have a solution to a problem, but you know, if there's a better solution out there, great.

Cool. Well, tell us a little bit about the UpMo and what it does and like, you know, how it works and, you know, the value that it brings patients every day. That's a good question, Terry. Currently, the standard of care is if you're in the hospital or rehabilitation center, you call a nurse by pressing a button. This you would press like in a you're stuck in a bed, right? So you're in the hospital and you're in a bed, right? It doesn't have to be in a bed, but could be. This is the way I envision it cuz my mom was in a bed. But you call this device it comes to you autonomously autonomous motion like a using LiDAR or LiDAR technology like a Roomba or a self-driving car. Okay. And then you have a personalized harness that you would attach to it that it would lower a nylon strap into your lap.

Not everybody's going to be able to use this device, but the ones who can it would alleviate the need like those people who can use it would take the healthcare workers could focus on the people who do you know, who need everyday care. We'd lower the device, lower the nylon strap into your lap, attach your harness on, put the harness on like a jacket. Right. it allows you to connect the activities of daily living without falling or injuring yourself in that way. You move under your own power, build strength. It fits through a doorframe in a hospital.

That's why it's for use in hospitals and rehabilitation centers and around the toilet. Okay. And then it would work in reverse. You come back to your bed and then you would unhook your device, unhook from the device and then take the your harness off and like unhook it and take it off like you would a jacket. Right. And go back to whatever. Cuz now Yeah, I mean now that Go ahead. Sorry. It would go charge itself and whereas now, you know, you're waiting hours, you just wait for that to navigate. Sorry, Terry, you were talking and No, it's good. I just think that like, you know, I know one of the biggest complaints you hear about people that are in the hospital is the whole aspect of needing to go to the bathroom, right?

5:40 And, you know, not needing to like hide your dignity because they ask you to go to the bathroom in your bedding and they'll put a pad down and you know, having a technology that allows people to get up and from their bed into the bathroom, do what they need to do and they get back into the bed autonomously because you know, what typically happens is they're ringing a bell and somebody says we'll be there and we'll be there if not this they just tell you to go to the bathroom in the bed and that's probably not a great experience for anybody by the way. So, like having a technology like this sounds like like it it's a win for everybody. The hospital has an autonomous technology that handles it. The patient has support that they want and need and it gets taken care of in a fairly fast fashion. So, it does sound like a what a wonderful thing to do. I even if you go to the bathroom and you

Have that pad, first of all, yes, that's humiliating, but also you're sitting in your own mess for like hours until somebody can come and change and who wants to be changed? When I was 1998, I was in that UN hospital and I had a cadre of Norwegian nurses. It was a peacekeeping mission and UN peacekeepers and there wasn't that many women military people. The challenge wasn't I had didn't have to wait. They were sitting there waiting for me to need them, but it was a mental hurdle for me to have to have an audience when I did anything. You're trained as a little kid. This is private. I wanted to you can't do it's a whole thing to and it was a hard enough for me, but when I saw my little mama having to I mean, she's an Irish woman and she's 110 lb. She went into that facility 110 lb, she came out 99.

But, it's not that those people weren't nice to her or not willing to help, but there just wasn't enough of them and that was in 2018. So, there's a twofold thing there. It's just humiliating and it's just it's a high priority to you or to the person, the patient, but really somebody going to the bathroom is not as important as list all the other things that healthcare workers have to deal with. High blood pressure or bleeding or I don't know. And then like when people get a knee replacement, you had a or you had the orthopedics person, so hopefully that's a thing of the past, but if you have to walk in the hallway, that's not a high priority for a healthcare worker to be on each side of you to help you walk or to be in case you fall, but you have to build strength and they tell you to do that. It This the UpMo would allow people to walk under build strength, but not

8:23 Compromise other people's recovery by needing healthcare workers that don't exist or that do exist, but they're spread too thin. Pretty cool. So, so where do you stand today with the technology? Where where are you trying to go and you know, like what like support with things like this like what's the path to getting it in the hands that can you know, actually benefit from the value? That's a really good question. We have a full-size mechanical prototype that can lift 500 lb and we have uh a harness with sensors in it that we have I have it was awkward as I'll get out during the pandemic and since then it's been awkward to go like go to people and be like stand up and sit down for science, especially young men. I'm a middle-aged you know, women, so that demographic was easy to cover, but there's no way to not be awkward. But we know that it's predictive. We know that there's a huge library of certain

Activities, not every activity. So, we just need to cover down on the activities that aren't covered and then compare that motion that with what we have and then integrate it as a control system. So, what's been your biggest obstacle, you know, up until now? Like you know, where are you going with it? Was it building it? Was it developing it? Like, you know, tell me a little bit about the friction points in your journey so far. I think that friction points that the biggest one has been figuring out the raising of funds and how to go about that. But also, a friction point has been artificial intelligence and people being scared, if that's the right word. They're intimidated by that cuz they don't really understand how it could help. They just think the Terminator and they don't think Big Hero 6 and it could help improve everybody's lives. They just think it could create this alternate universe where where it's this alternate where war could be fought or somebody could go back in time and kill

Somebody and it's ridiculous. But they don't see how it could benefit mankind. Got it. So, you have um so you have a robotic AI intelligence inside the machine operates and will learn in a new environment, will teach itself where it's at and how to navigate? Is it kind of like a Roomba that you have to set up these sort of you know, you you you stage it with certain boundaries and things like that. Well, that would depend on the environment that it's put in, but like everybody's self-driving cars like Waymo, right? Like you can that technology exists, you just have to get you have to obtain it. So, it can navigate through a busy hospital setting. And there would be situations where you would want to block off certain areas. Like for instance, I'm just going to throw this out there, the nurses' station at the hot the local hospital. You know, it wouldn't even come near that and it would use the like Waymo technology of like not allowing

11:11 It to run into people. The sensors are the control system and it compares your like for instance, I walk with a limp. So, it'd know that I walk with a limp and that's normal for me. But if I it's got a fail-safe so that I wouldn't be able to like the local hospital in St. Louis says unplanned descent with or without injury. I couldn't unplanned descent. I couldn't The accelerometers would notice that I'm descending and then restrict that motion. Now, the response, you're not going to hang there like a piñata. It might lower you slowly to the ground. It might, you know, allow pick you up like a little kid to let you get your feet under you to, you know, to But it will not allow you to like fall and hit your head.

Well, that's pretty cool. It sounds like I love the fact it doesn't let you hang like a piñata. That was a good one. I'll remember that. So, fundraising's been a challenge and what do you think like what's the pathway to market? So, if you had funding today, what what does that path look like? Is it Is it 5 10K? Is it Is there, you know, like how long does it take to get to market? What are the challenges in getting it to market and approved? So, there's not It's not real Okay, depends on a predicate device.

There is not really a predicate device because even the devices, like for instance, the closest device to ours would be, I don't want Locomat, I think it's called, but it it's a physical therapy device that that fit that goes around a treadmill so that you can build strength. But it requires a healthcare worker to use. You can't use it independently and it doesn't have this ability to like self-correct or like to allow people to not fall. You need a healthcare worker there to They're not easy to use and all these things. So, it would be a de novo path. I think I'm pretty sure 85% sure that it would be a de novo path and it would require That could be 90 days, it could be 12 years.

And I think that scares some investors off because it's, you know, very uncertain, but it's also needed. Like the healthcare shortage is not a secret. So, the healthcare worker shortage. So, there is incentive there to find a solution to to that problem. And if this offers a viable solution, we have to be able to prove that and make that argument, then that moves us more towards that 90-day. So, yeah. right now we're in the pre-seed round of funding in $1,000 is what we're looking for and that would get us to start the FDA process and the integration of the control system to the mechanical device.

That's pretty cool and then and then from there to sort of you just stack on next sequence after that or What we would like to do is have we had a healthcare advisory board before that in 20 we started this company in 2019 2019 and 2020 we had the healthcare advisory support and said standing up and sitting down was the most important scenario to figure out and that's what we have and walking in is the next but there's a a huge library of walking thanks to the Apple watch and Fitbit and all that stuff so we need to see if those will work and that will that will make the algorithm much easier for us.

14:15 It's a lot less development time. So you're on a a journey for funding what is that journey been like so far like who do you typically target for funding? Well we have initially we've bootstrapped from winning pitch competitions and like self-funding friends and family and then self-funding and things like that we've like kind of been very creative and very resourceful I guess is the word however what we're looking for in the like going forward is we have realized over time that it's you know we're not looking for just dumb money we want a partnership we want somebody who and that seems to have come seems mostly to be investors that have experience in this like not just business investors but they they have experience with either a family member or they understand the problem existing right they've been a patient themselves like our CEO was a fan of Sheila but he had a knee replacement and he understood that okay the need for the upward mobility and the

Upmost the benefit that it offers. So I think that there that there is definitely a space there where uh funding needs to come from somebody who understands the benefit that we offer and has the experience to be like, "Okay, this is who else need you need to work with." Whether that's a group family practice, angel investors, or traditional VC. Okay, cool. Um so, once you get the money, then you have that 6-month window to get to the next phase. Ideally, it'd be 6 months, but yeah, we have certain tasks that are associated with that. So, if we get those tasks done in 6 months, or if it's longer than 6 months, then we can phase, right? That's cool. And so, you have a prototype built now. I know you've got like something that maybe we can share like a visual. Do you have anything with you that we can There you go. I love This is a 1/12 size. It A doll fits in here, and we have a doll that is naked and it grosses me out.

And we have a toilet, and that's with the doll somewhere. This is This got some room to fit through a door frame that's 42 in. The real I don't know what 142. Math is hard. you can sit inside of that, right? Is that And it There's straps in there that hold you up? There's handles here, but I hooked those. I broke It's unidirectional, so you could take it into the bathroom and then it Got it. You don't have to turn it around. You just use it the other way.

16:48 Yeah. So, it's got four handles and you'd stand in it, but it would allow you to sit and stand a strap there that helps you get out of bed. So, I remember the story about like trying to get your mom out of bed. Is that a strap that pulls you out, or how does that work? So, the strap would I'm pointing here, and I It's a podcast, so people would hear me. I listened to the ones I didn't watch. too. So, you got like we're in the video with YouTube, so So, it would drop the nylon strap from the thing, and then from here, and then you would attach your harness to it. And your harness would have the inertial measurement units in it, the sensors, and the healthcare worker would know who which patient is attached to which device and then where they're at.

That's pretty cool. That's nice. So, and they and they can just kind of maneuver their self throughout the hospital in that little UpMo, you know, that's that's pretty cool. It is pretty cool and it's Okay, if I say air like an air hockey table, you don't know how much like it moves effortlessly. It moves floats, but it's it's like a wall if you need it to be a wall. It stops and it the frame will work like a and pick you up if you Solid frame, yeah. So, like that's pretty interesting. I'm I'm guessing from a health worker perspective, too, that you know, it probably is good for preventing injuries, possibly, like lifting people out of the bed and things like that.

Yeah, every year there's 13 or 14 billion dollars in healthcare worker injuries that are mostly lower back and Wow. you can't recover for those. And like registered nurses have a lot of education and they can work with patients for an average 12 years. There is a lot of injuries that happen that if we had a better way, an easy way to manipulate people and for them to do stuff on their own, that would be better for everybody. Nobody like the patient doesn't want the healthcare worker to get injured and 300 lb middle-aged person doesn't want the 22-year-old CNA to get injured trying to help them go to the bathroom. Nobody wants that.

Good safety for hospital workers, too. That's awesome. Um so, any closing words on your end before we kind of wrap things up? I have one more question for you when you're done, but I just want to make sure anything that you want to leave us with before we go. I think I just generally want to say this. Generally speaking, I've heard about the entrepreneurship spirit and like people want to work for themselves. I have been doing and that was never my plan, but I have learned and I have experienced first hand that it's an illusion to think there's security in working for somebody else and working for yourself being in security or like not secure. Right. At least you know all the things, right? Like you don't get a year away from retirement and be like, "And you're fired." Like that's Right. not something that happen.

19:41 Well, cool. That's that's a great closing statement. So, I'm going to ask this question really slowly for you that I don't think we discussed it before, but I ask this question to every guest. And so, if we could have you know, current day Sheila go back and give advice to 18-year-old Sheila when she was graduating in high school and going into the military, what advice would current day Sheila give 18-year-old Sheila? About what? I think just in general to listen to yourself more than other people. Very like your gut instinct or your intuition or whatever you want to call it. I think that's for you, that's your own. Other people, it's not that they're bad or ill-intentioned or don't want the best for you, but their experience isn't your experience. And I think as I get older, I'm more appreciative of how sometimes it's it's just not the world is not the same, right? Like my experience is not the experience of somebody 10 years older than me. And it's unfair to think that it used to

Drive me crazy when somebody who was on this earth prior to me being on the earth thought that they had all the answers. That's ridiculous. And it's not that not to listen to that advice, not to consider it, but if your gut or your intuition tells you to do something else, navigate it differently. That's good advice. My My favorite thing I do about the podcast, by the way, is one day I hope to have like, you know, 100 different answers on a podcast of just that answer by itself over and over again. So, so Sheila Buswell, thank you so much.

You're, you know, bring great energy, you bring great frequency, you trying to solve a big problem with a great technology and I just want to say thank you so much for being with me today. Thank you, Terry. I I really liked being here and I enjoyed our conversation. Great. Thank you so much. Have a great day. You too. That's a wrap on Zero Friction, the show built around one simple idea, remove the barriers and the revenue will follow. If today's conversation was valuable, please subscribe and share it with somebody who needs to hear it. That's how we will grow this community. I'm Terry Coutsolioutsos, revenue architect powered by AI. Come find me at my website, myrevRX.com and let's talk about what friction is costing you and your organization. Until next time, keep removing the barriers and keep the revenue flowing.