Success Stories
A Kingston Region Success Story
BKIN Technologies
A robotic breakthrough is changing the way brain injuries are studied and treated
Currently, the only way to assess a patient’s brain functionality after a stroke is with very simple, subjective tests — usually by a nurse asking the patient to touch his/ her nose, and then scoring him/ her between zero and two. But, a new virtual reality device developed at Queen’s University 
is about to change that.
Called KINARM™ (Kinesiological Instrument for Normal and Altered Reaching Movement) , it has the ability to give doctors a clear picture of how a patient’s brain is actually functioning.
Dr. Stephen Scott
Inventor of the KINARM™
and founder of BKIN Technologies
“The KINARM™ gives a more in-depth look at brain function — showing subtle increases in functions, where the normal “zero to two” test does not. It gives a virtual fingerprint of how the brain is functioning — which is very important, for example, for people who are recovering from a stroke.” says Anne Vivian-Scott, CEO of BKIN Technologies.
The KINARM™ works through a virtual reality simulator added to a chair with robotic arms. Clinicians guide the seated patient through a series of standardized tasks — such as hitting balls with virtual paddles, or interacting with objects in a virtual world — and the device measures the speed and accuracy of the tasks performed.
The device is the invention of Dr. Stephen Scott, a Queen’s University researcher and founder of BKIN Technologies — the company that is bringing the KINARM™ to market.
An internationally recognized neuroscientist, Dr. Scott created the robotic system to further his own research. By 2004, he was receiving requests for the KINARM™ from fellow researchers across North America. So, with the assistance of Queen’s University’s PARTEQ Innovations and co-founder Dr. Ian Brown, BKIN Technologies was born.
“By embedding the technology in a start-up company, we were able to sell the product to basic researchers right from the start. This allowed us to bootstrap the additional design and development needed to get the KINARM™ out of the lab and into the hands of other researchers,” says John Molloy, President and CEO of PARTEQ Innovations — which has already spun out more than a dozen such start-up companies in the Kingston region.
All three hospitals in Kingston now have a KINARM™ in research use, and the device is now being used by more than 20 research institutions around the world — helping scientists understand how people perform the smooth, purposeful movements of their upper limbs and how this ability is affected by brain injury and disease.
The KINARM™ in action
BKIN is currently a tenant of Innovation Park at Queen’s University and manufactures KINARMs™ under contract to the university.
The company has seen a steady increase in sales and now sells close to six KINARMs™ a year. While the device can only be used for research at this time, the company is already putting in place the international design and manufacturing standards needed to take the device forward for regulatory approval.
And, the future looks bright for BKIN. Two emerging areas of application for KINARM™ are professional sports and the military, where impact-based head injuries are an occupational reality, and where there is a significant lack of effective tools for determining when patients can safely return to regular duties without the risk of a career-ending injury.
Ms. Vivian-Scott says that with world-class researchers available at Queen’s and connections right around the corner through the Eastern Lake Ontario Regional Innovation Network (ELORIN) and the Ontario Network of Excellence (ONE) , “We’re wed to Kingston, we’d be foolish to move away.”
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