Injuries, pain, aching muscles and bones – all of these are reasons that over 50 million Americans seek physical therapy services each year. For the thousands of physical therapists around the U.S., that could mean seeing over a dozen patients every day. Such demanding schedules and high patient volumes mean that many physical therapists face their own challenges such as repetitive strain injuries and fatigued muscles and joints, challenges that can impact careers.
Few individuals understand these challenges better than Dr. Todd Arnold, M.D., medical officer for elite athlete healthcare for USA Track & Field. A former athlete himself, Arnold is familiar with both the struggles of recovering athletes, and the efforts of therapists rehabilitating them. One day a few years ago, he had a conversation with his partner Tim Drudge about a physical therapist friend of theirs named Darrell who was suffering from hand pain.
“His hands were hurting so much after working all day,” Arnold said. “We’d watch him flex his wrists back and forth or rub his forearms. Seeing that, we thought we’d try to make a tool to help Darrell and the rest of the world.”
After that conversation, they dug a little deeper into the idea. They found that up to 20% of all manual therapists, massage therapists, athletic trainers, and chiropractors change the way they practice because of upper extremity pain.
“There are thousands of clinicians changing the way they practice or are even getting out of practice entirely because of their pain,” Arnold said. “To combat that, over a three year period, we developed a tool called whYgrip.”
whYgrip is a small grip that straps around the therapist’s hand and includes a small pill-shaped apparatus attached to the palm, reducing fatigue on providers’ hands, wrists, and elbows without compromising the efficacy of manual therapy.
“The whole idea is ‘why’ grip a tool with your hands and thumbs to apply pressure if you can just attach it to your hand,” Arnold said. “This can help clinicians not hurt so much and hopefully preserve some careers.”
Arnold and Drudge sent out a number of prototypes to clinicians across the country, including those working on elite athletes in the NFL, NBA, and NCAA.
“What we’ve heard from many of them is that they’ve integrated whYgrip into their practices every day,” Arnold said. “At the end of the day, and especially at the end of a week, their hands and arms feel better. Hearing that, we think that clinicians who bring whYgrip into their practices are going to see a significant reduction in pain and fatigue, and that can be transformative to allowing them to practice longer and maybe even care for their patients more completely.”
whYgrip is set to begin manufacturing soon, so Arnold and Drudge sought out professional legal expertise to ensure that their rights to their invention were protected. Being from Indiana, Arnold connected with the Indiana Small Business Development Center, who pointed him towards Hartman Global Intellectual Property (IP) Law.
Led by co-founders and IP attorneys Domenica and Gary Hartman, Hartman Global introduced Arnold to the ins and outs of IP law. The amount of knowledge at first seemed intimidating to the clinician.
“The process for getting a patent is overwhelming. If you look it up online and think you can try and do it alone, you’re fooling yourself,” he said. “It’s multilayered, multifactorial – it’s just too much for someone who isn’t a patent attorney and specialist to pull off correctly.”
Domenica Hartman worked closely with Arnold to explain the process and the different protections offered by the USA’s various IP laws. To someone stepping into the world of invention and manufacturing for the first time, the guidance proved an immense comfort.
“She made sure my patent was protected and as safe in the United States as possible,” he said. “What I felt working with her is what I hope patients feel when they come to see me as a physician in a clinic. I had the feeling where you know this person is an expert in their field, someone educated and informed, ready to answer all your questions and give you a solution to run with.”
To learn more about whYgrip and Arnold, please visit www.whygrip.com. For more information on Hartman Global IP Law, check out hartmanglobal-ip.com.