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Professor Eiichiro Tanaka from Waseda’s Graduate School of Information, Production and Systems, Professor Louis Yuge from Hiroshima University’s Graduate School of Biomedical & Health Sciences, and Yumi Kawahara, President of the Space Bio Laboratories Co., Ltd., collaborated to develop a light-weight, walking assistance apparatus, “RE-Gait®.”

In recent years, Japan has faced problems in an aging society, and mobility aid has been drawing much attention in the fields of medicine and supportive care provided in homes/nursing care facilities. Furthermore, despite the high risk of stumbling and falling from walking by patients recovering from a stroke, many of these patients are often times discharged from hospitals even when they still have difficulties and must recuperate at home. After 8 years of trial and error, RE-Gait® was developed to help the elderly and such patients.

The most outstanding feature of RE-Gait® is that it can raise a person’s leg by only supporting their ankle joints. The apparatus only weighs 1kg and is easy-to-use.  Starting October 17, RE-Gait® will be sold to medical and welfare facilities by Origin Inc., a company specializing in nursing care management and sales in medical/assistive care technology devices. RE-Gait® was also displayed at the Space Bio Laboratories booth in BioJapan 2016, a global biotechnology industry event, held on October 12 – 14 in Yokohama this year.

Image of the tablet screen storing gait data