KINGSTON, ON — BKIN Technologies Ltd. is pleased to announce that its KINARM robotic assessment system has been granted three additional patents.

Three separate patent families had patents issued or allowed since the beginning of the year, in part thanks to the expert stewardship of the patent group at PARTEQ Innovations.  “Method and Apparatus for Assessing or Detecting Brain Injury and Neurological Disorders” (US Patent No. 8,740,794) issued on June 3, 2014 which covers two foundational tasks in BKIN’s KINARM Standard Tests suite.  The patent relates to the Object Hit and Object Hit and Avoid tasks (released in 2011), plus other variants currently in development.  A rapid bimanual switching task, it was developed to objectively assess the ability of a subject to select and engage motor actions with both hands over a range of speeds and a large workspace.  The tests have been very effective at identifying both subtle neurological deficits in brain injured and sport concussed subjects, plus also providing clinician scientists with the means to quantify deficits from stroke precisely such as spatial neglect.  A paper issued earlier this year discussing the early clinical findings of the Object Hit task with stroke subjects (Tyryshkin, et al, J Neuroeng Rehabil, 2014).

“System and Method for Integrating Gaze Tracking With Virtual Reality or Augmented Reality” also issued in the United States (US Patent No. 8,730,266).  This is the first patent in this family that describes methods for tracking eye-movements in the horizontal plane – an ability not currently available with other eye-trackers, but key to gaze-tracking subject movements in a KINARM Lab.

Further the European Patent Office has advised BKIN of their intention to grant “Robotic Exoskeleton for Limb Movement” which covers BKIN’s next-generation KINARM Exoskeleton design just entering production.

The breakthrough KINARM™ robotic assessment system was invented at Queen’s University at Kingston, Ontario, Canada, by Drs. Stephen Scott and Ian Brown.

“These patents are significant on several fronts,” says Anne Vivian-Scott, President and CEO of BKIN. “The “method” patents validate how our system is used to diagnose neurological function, and helps to crystallize the very important research findings being made by clinician-scientists who are using the system.  The European patent is important because it extends the lifespan of our protection on KINARM Exoskeleton Labs and extends it to Europe.  It provides additional time for this valuable, disruptive technology to expand its global markets while helping to increase scientific understanding of sensorimotor neuroscience.”

BKIN’s KINARM™ is the world’s first robotic system for measuring, with exquisite sensitivity and precision, the effects of brain injury on an individual’s ability to perform ordinary movements and tasks. The system is being used to examine a wide range of brain injuries, from stroke and concussion to identification of deficits following cardiac arrest.

There are now 50 KINARM Labs™ in the field at 43 research institutions worldwide, including Keio University in Tokyo, Umea University in Sweden and the Hotchkiss Brain Institute at the University of Calgary. BKIN now has a total of 9 issued patents in its exclusively licensed portfolio from Queen’s University at Kingston.

Contact:

Anne Vivian-Scott

President & CEO

P: 613. 507. 4393

E: avivianscott@bkintechnologies.com

www.bkintechnologies.com