Runeasi -
to make the world run better
Runeasi is a KU Leuven (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium) sports tech spin-off. Their mission is to make the world run better and help people to enjoy pain free running by leveraging scientific research in Biomechanics and Artificial Intelligence.
It is proven that the impact when a runner’s foot hits the ground is repetitive and ruthless. Overload, asymmetry and poor movement control can cause setbacks, injuries and pain. Runeasi is based on 8 years of collaborative research between the Human Movement and Artificial Intelligence Research Groups of KU Leuven. It is the first scientifically validated wearable technology which combines biomechanics and AI to introduce a novel way to look at running. It enables physios to accurately measure impact on the body and detect how the body responds to that impact and allows to perform these biomechanical assessments on patients and athletes in real time. The insights they get allow them to guide their clients.
BUSINESS CHALLENGES
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Creating & development of a mobile app that communicates with Runeasi sensor api and allows physios to analyse biomechanical metrics using intuitive visualizations.
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Setting up a cloud infrastructure supporting SaaS bussiness model that allows Runeasi to authenticate customers, manage their licenses, synchronize data between multiple devices and enables them to continuously improve the service by learning from the data.
The first step was to verify with physiotherapists the idea of Runeasi to analyze the runners’ movements with the smallest possible budget – to limit the risk of investment. After achieving the goals set for the MVP version, the next step was to build a high quality product.
INDUSTRY
TIME
TECHNOLOGIES
PROCESS
Runeasi wanted to make a mobile application working with the sensor and to start testing the wearable technology with physios and their patients. They came with a list of many features they wanted to implement and asked for an estimation.
Leaware, using their own new product discovery process, helped Runeasi to define the main purpose of using the first version of an application and to choose the most important functionalities, setting the minimal budget. The crucial thing on that stage was to enable physiotherapists to measure impact and interpret the data efficiently. The whole documentation was created and the development was done in a short time. It enabled Runeasi to test the solution with physios and gather invaluable feedback.
Runeasi decided to collaborate with Leaware for future improvements and extensions of their product.
Leaware was responsible for Interaction Design and User Interface. Developed "custom components" looking for the best way to present data. Worked hand in hand with Runeasi at every stage, from design through development to implementation.
CURRENT STATE
The product which Runeasi initially released was well-received by early adopters. Runeasi got the feedback that their product allows users to do efficient screenings of their patients and reveal interesting insights that are not trivial to spot otherwise. A biofeedback module for gait retraining, for which Leaware built a custom visualization turned out to be an effective tool to let patients self-optimize their running technique.
Now customer base is growing, Runeasi is working on adding more functionalities to the app while making some parts of the app more robust. A grant they recently received from The Flemish Agency for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (VLAIO) will allow them to test the product market fit of some other ideas that they have in our pipeline. Leaware will help with the design and development of the mock-ups and prototypes needed to test these ideas.
Tim Op De Beéck - CTO, Runeasi
We found out about Leaware via one of our mentors at KBC startit, an incubator for startups. After comparing Leaware to several other potential partners, we decided to work with them because their lean product development methodology aligned nicely with our needs as a startup. We were convinced that we could benefit a lot from the best practices that Leaware developed over the past years while working on a high number of other projects. Even though we were all working remotely, it feels like one big team. Although the timeline for our first release was really short, we managed to release it on time.
I think Leaware offers much more than just extra developers. They think along, they quickly understood our problem domain and helped us to prioritize to come up with a product that maximizes the value for our end users while respecting our budget. Leaware sped up our time to market by helping us with the mobile development and cloud backend. Being able to rely on the expertise and best practices of the Leaware team for these aspects of our product allowed us to focus on our core expertise: i.e., developing embedded biomechanical algorithms to interpret sensor data of runners and other athletes and delivering actionable insights to physiotherapists through advanced data analytics.
INDUSTRY/SECTOR
Sports Technology
SOLUTION
Mobile App for IOS and Android working with hardware sensor.
TIME
from January 2021 – ongoing
TECHNOLOGIES
Xamarin.Forms
Azure AD B2C
Azure Functions (.NET Core)
Azure DevOps