Filisia supports the training, rehabilitation and access of people with additional needs through creative and connected technology.
Our first product, Monoma, enables users’ creativity and engagement through music making and gamified rehabilitation exercises. It consists of modular sensor based controllers and of a software platform with several therapy modules. Each module uses colours, sounds, music and lights and can be seen as a large training programme which helps to improve a specific cognitive or motor deficit. Our technology is the first controller with bi-directional communication that is designed to be accessible by people with disabilities. Unlike competitive companies that serve specific vertical niches, our hardware is interoperable with existing training and accessibility software packages offering several new interactions.
Our users are people with medium to severe cases of musculoskeletal, neurological and cognitive disabilities (~50 million in Europe, the US, Canada and Australia). Our clients are rehabilitation centres, clinics, hospitals, day care centres, special schools, therapists, and the families of our users. For the 1.5 year we have been working with 70+ therapists, 3 rehabilitation centres and 30 users and parents. We have developed 10 generations of prototypes and we are currently conducting clinical studies with the University of Birmingham. We also have distribution offers presale by two major UK assistive technology resellers.
Therapists that evaluated our product found that it: (a) is a recreational tool, (b) It supports the training of attention orientation, memory, logical reasoning), (c) supports users’ exercising of fine, gross motor skills (d) is a valuable assessment tool because it provides insight into users’ progress.
Filisia operates in the high profit margin industry of Assistive Technology. Our main stream comes from selling Monoma devices and software. For rehabilitation centres and therapists we offer a yearly subscription model and for parents one-off sales model. Secondary streams come from selling add-ons (HW and SW) and licensing our hardware. We sell through our website and resellers. We plan to engage with online communities and promote through targeted online advertising, specialised press and trade shows.
We have received several health and social entrepreneurship distinctions by Ashoka, Stanford University, the European Investment Bank and Impact Hub. In 2014 we graduated from Oxygen Accelerator and are financially supported by the UK Trade and Investment. We’ve raised £100k through these awards and £50k through a convertible note. The Filisia team consists of: CEO/Founder/interactive systems designer Georgios Papadakis, data scientist Panos Tigkas, financing and operations officer Eirini Malliaraki, mechanical engineer George Hountas and software developer Andreas Lemis. Dr Lila Kossyvaki and angel investor Markos Komondouros sit on our scientific and business advisory board respectively.