Majid Sarrafzadeh founded MediSens, which makes a smart shoe.

By Andy Evangelista

UCLA computer science professor Majid Sarrafzadeh and his colleagues have worked on smart canes and body sensor networks, but it was an electronic shoe that booted them into business.

The shoe is equipped with a device that allows health care professionals to monitor and assess patients suffering balance problems, such as diabetics or those starting new medications. Because patients don't always report those kinds of problems to their doctors, they're at risk for falls, which could be crippling - physically and economically. 

Sarrafzadeh's group at the UCLA Wireless Health Community worked with the campus Office of Intellectual Property, which helped them gather investors and craft a licensing agreement with UCLA. In 2007 they founded MediSens to bring their smart shoe idea to market and explore other wireless medical solutions.

MediSens was the first of 10 start-ups selected for UCLA's on-campus technology incubator, which nurtures early-stage research and attempts to speed the commercial translation of technologies developed at that campus.

Its technology will be used to develop body monitoring systems with specific applications for diabetics with peripheral neuropathy — the loss of sensation in the foot — and those with health issues that affect their balance.

"We hope that this technology will help to reduce the large number of injuries caused by diabetic foot ulcers and by falls each year, both in hospital rehabilitation departments and in at-home care environments," Sarrafzadeh said.

MediSens is also beginning clinical trials of its wireless body-monitoring system, which assesses muscle and motor functions in the upper extremities. Data from such a system could be useful to health care professionals, such as physical and occupational therapists, who are helping patients rehabilitate from injury.

Sarrafzadeh's leap into health-related technology was triggered eight years ago after he and his wife brought their daughter, born prematurely, home from the hospital. The parents had to maintain constant vigil over their baby, and he wondered about building a small device to monitor her breathing instead of having to watch her all day and night.

After that experience, he helped create the UCLA Wireless Health Community, a group of experts and innovators from many UCLA schools including engineering, law, management, medicine, nursing, public health, and theater, film and television. MediSens is the first spinoff from the institute.

And for Sarrafzadeh, daughter and company are now doing fine.

Andy Evangelista is the research coordinator for the UC Office of the President Strategic Communications Department.  For more information, visit the UC Newsroom or follow us on Twitter.