RoboFit’s assistive technology goes holistic, accelerated by SME@UTS
Robotics-powered rehab company RoboFit brought a novel assistive technology to Australia. SME@UTS and the UTS Executive MBA Strategic Design Studio are helping them get it into the hands of those who need it.
When her husband Daniel Hillyer became a quadriplegic, Maryanne Harris started looking for answers in the global rehabilitation market. But when she discovered Japanese assistive technology company Cyberdyne in 2012, she had no idea how much her life — and Daniel’s — was about to change. Today, as Cyberdyne’s official Australian distribution partners, Harris and Hillyer are committed to making the company’s technologies accessible to other people with spinal and neurological injuries through their RoboFit rehabilitation clinics.
With the recent launch of their second rehabilitation clinic in the Sydney suburb of Alexandria, the couple were looking for new opportunities to deliver the benefits of Cyberdyne’s neuro-controlled HAL exoskeleton, an assistive technology for people with spinal and neurological injuries, at scale. That’s because they’ve seen its potential firsthand: thanks to HAL, Daniel has regained various motor and sensory functions, even completing a five-kilometre walk across Sydney Harbour Bridge in 2014.
“HAL is very much at the forefront of assistive technology and its application in both community and hospital-based settings,” Harris says.
As the founders of a small company with big plans, Harris and Hillyer needed tailored business support to help them bring their ambitious growth strategy to life. And in 2022, they found it: after a meeting at their Wollongong site with SME@UTS, a concierge style service that connects SMEs to growth opportunities, they were invited to participate free of charge in a UTS innovation strategy program called the Executive MBA Strategic Design Studio.
A deep dive into business strategy
The Strategic Design Studio draws on the expertise of Executive MBA (EMBA) students to deliver strategic business solutions and innovative implementation plans for a broad range of organisations.
“EMBA students are experienced business professionals who return to university to upskill in innovation leadership. Their expertise is on par with what you’d find in professional consulting services. As a result, businesses gain access to industry-standard expertise at very low cost, and they also retain any IP that’s generated during the program,” says Associate Professor Jochen Schweitzer, Faculty Lead for the Strategic Design Studio and course director of the Executive MBA.
Participating organisations provide a project brief that describes the challenge they’re seeking to address. The RoboFit team’s starting brief was simple: how could they best attract and retain talent for their growing business? But at the first meeting with their EMBA student team (Sophia Amor-Smith, Norlie Dooma, Ali Khameneh and Bartek Marnane), who were supported by executive business coach Tiziana Bianco, the RoboFit team realised they could be asking more complex questions. Expanding the brief, the students set about exploring a more challenging proposition: how could RoboFit grow its revenue to support the company’s growth plans over the next five years?
“It became obvious that the team wanted to — and had the energy and experience to — do a deeper dive into how they could add value to our strategy,” Harris says.
Fast tracking new opportunities for growth
The team leveraged strategic design practices and their research included an exploration of industry trends, competitor and market analyses, and extensive interviews with RoboFit staff and allied health professionals, who shared their insights into the rehabilitation space. The work produced two key recommendations: that RoboFit adopt a ‘holistic hub’ model that would add nutrition and mental health to their existing service offerings, and that they pursue a partnership with a government insurer to trial HAL technologies for use in workplace injury prevention. These actionable outcomes mirrored much of what was already captured in RoboFit’s strategy but provided the granular data they needed to start moving the company forwards.
“On our roadmap, there were things we’d quantified that we thought were value adds for our customers that would help improve their outcomes, but we hadn’t sat down and done a quantification of what that looked like from a business case perspective,” Harris says.
The findings are currently supporting RoboFit to lean into their business expansion plans: in addition to the opening of their second clinic earlier this year, they’re currently looking at how to deliver some of the services outlined in the holistic hubs model via partnerships, and they’ve also fast-tracked early conversations to kickstart their move into the workplace injury market.
The Strategic Design Studio is just one complimentary program on offer through SME@UTS. This concierge-style service helps SMEs upskill their workforce, access emerging student talent, collaborate on innovative projects, develop strategic roadmaps and test products in our world-class R&D facilities with the aim of enabling digital transformation in technology and manufacturing.
Contact the team via SME@UTS.edu.au to arrange a complimentary consultation to explore your needs and ideas. SME@UTS is supported with contributing funds from the Commonwealth Department of Education.