Injuries to the lower back are the second most prevalent disorder presented to medical practitioners today (second only to upper respiratory ailments) and are often the most difficult to diagnose or treat. The myriad of current methods used in evaluating lower back injuries and disorders (LBDs) are very subjective. Consequentially, the number of insurance claims and the amount of each claim push this ailments costs over the $100 billion mark in the US alone. There are no clinical methods/devices that remove the subjectivity from the assessment of impairment due to LBDs for most patients. A quantitative laboratory research tool (device) has been developed and shown to add objectivity to the evaluation of LBDs. One objective of this project is to update the technology, making a device suitable for clinical use. Another objective is to assess the new tool against the current one in the laboratory to assure that no feature of the original device has been lost or compromised. Based on this assessment, a clinically viable device will be available for the quantitative evaluation of LBDs, which promises to reduce the subjectivity of the clinical evaluation and the subsequent costs in treating the disorder.
According to the U.S. Center for Healthcare Statistics, 80% of adults seek care for low back pain at some time in their lives, and 50% of adults have an episode of low back pain in any given year. The problem is wide spread, difficult to diagnose and expensive to treat. The potential markets for the device we propose to develop are physical therapy clinics, insurance companies, government organizations (NIOSH, OSHA, etc.), manufacturing companies (workplace assessment), orthopedic clinics, and companies that make office equiment (ergonomic assessment). Focussing only on the physical therapy clinics, there are over 98,000 such clinics according to data from the American Physical Therapy Association and the American Hospital Association. This number has remained relatively stable and could be expected to remain static over a forecast period of the next five years. Even with a small market penetration of only 0.1% per year, our sales can be expected to reach $2 million the first year and increase by $2 million per year over the next five years, for a total of 0.5% penetration and $10 million annually at the end of five years. At this rate, market saturation will not occur in any forseeable future.
