Summary
In this episode of the CareLab podcast, hosts Emilia Bourland and Brandy Archie speak with Emile Maamary, co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer of Steadiwear. Emile shares the inspiring origin story of Steadiwear—a company dedicated to restoring independence for individuals with Parkinson’s disease and essential tremor through innovative, non-invasive wearable technology. He explains how earthquake engineering inspired the creation of their flagship product, the Steadi-One glove, which helps stabilize hand tremors using a battery-free, magnet-based damping system. The episode explores how the device enhances users' ability to perform daily tasks, its design evolution, clinical results, and the broader impact on caregivers. Emile also offers practical details on usage, cost, and where to try or purchase the device.
Key Questions Answered
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What is Steadiwear, and who is it for?
Steadiwear is a company that developed the Steadi-One glove, a wearable, non-invasive device designed to help people living with essential tremor or Parkinson’s disease. It counteracts tremors to improve users' ability to perform daily tasks. -
How does the Steadi-One device work?
Inspired by earthquake engineering, the device uses a tuned mass damper with magnets to stabilize tremors. It provides a counteracting force to the user’s hand tremors in real time—without requiring batteries or calibration. -
What activities can users perform more easily while wearing the device?
Users have reported improved ability in tasks like eating, drinking, writing, applying makeup, shaving, cooking, and even playing musical instruments. It enhances overall dexterity for activities of daily living (ADLs). -
Is the device comfortable and safe to wear all day?
Yes. The current version weighs about 10 ounces—lighter than a can of soda—and is adjustable for comfort. Most users wear it for about four hours at a time, but it can be worn longer depending on individual needs and comfort levels. -
Is Steadi-One covered by insurance or Medicare?
Currently, it is not covered by insurance or Medicare, but Steadiwear is working on future eligibility. They offer flexible payment plans and a 30-day money-back guarantee. For veterans, the device is fully covered by the VA.
Transcript
Emilia Bourland
Hi everyone, welcome to CareLab. What if the simple act of holding a cup of coffee felt like climbing a mountain? For millions living with Parkinson's or essential tremor, everyday tasks can become battles with their own hands and bodies. And in this episode, we're exploring how innovative non-invasive tools are changing that reality and helping people regain not just control, but confidence. If you've ever wondered how to bring a little bit more independence and ease to someone you love, you won't want to miss this conversation.
Brandy Archie
And we're so glad to be able to have this conversation with Emil Namary, who's the co-founder and chief marketing officer at Steadywear, which is a company that's dedicated to restoring independence to those who are living with Parkinson's disease or essential tremor. Inspired by the struggles of his own family members with tremors, Emil.
Emile Maamary
And it's time for you to be a more confident. Because this is the first time that a person can be so confident. And it's not a fair to say that you're going to be able to do it. to be able to do it. So, I'm going tell you how to I'm going tell you how to do it. it. You're be to it. going to it. it. You're going going to it. to it. You're going to to it. You're You're to to it.
Brandy Archie
You made his mission to create accessible, non-invasive solutions. And with over 10 years of experience in marketing operations and strategy and executive MBA from Cornell and Queens, he's helped Steadiware raise a bunch of money, generate a bunch of revenue, and bring this novel stabilization technology to the market.
Beyond his work, Emil mentored accessibility focused startups, is awesome. Believing deeply in the power of community, knowledge sharing and compassion driven innovation. And in his free time, he enjoys tennis, football and high intensity, shoot, I should have said hit workouts. But cause I thought I remembered what HIT team meant, but I don't.
Brandy Archie
In his free time he enjoys tennis, football, and HIIT workouts. Emil, we are so glad to have you. Thanks for being on the podcast today.
Emile Maamary
It's great to be here. Thank you for having me and thank you for the awesome introduction. I'm really happy to share more about what we've been working on and study, study we're here for the past year. And we'll tell you a little bit more about our background to why we started the company and dive into how caregivers can access our solution.
Emilia Bourland
Yeah, so that's a great place to start actually. Would you tell us a little bit about yourself, how you came to start studyware and what your personal background is that kind of led to you wanting to focus on this issue?
Emile Maamary
That's a great question, Amelia. So my CEO, Mark and I, we started this company in 2015. We met a couple of years before that. We were hanging out and around the same times, both of our grandmothers got diagnosed with essential tremor. So we were exploring what was available out there, trying to better understand the problem. And we were both fresh graduates, Mark was a structural engineer.
Brandy Archie
Mmm.
Emile Maamary
Sorry, Mark is a structural engineer and I recently graduated from the University of Toronto. I had just finished up my bachelor's degree at York University here in Toronto. So we were exploring the options and we realized that there was a significant gap in the market. We realized that, you know, it was either medication, which was bolted with side effects, anti-convulsants that were never designed for tremors in the first place, or you were looking at a deep brain stimulation at the time.
you know, a very intrusive and expensive high risk treatment that is effective, but can, can quickly lead to other problems. You know, going under the knife or the elderly population is always risky. So we decided to, you know, explore some other ways to tackle this problem. And, you know, Mark being a structural engineer, he, he couldn't help, but noticed the relation from, earthquake design to.
hand tremors and realized that, you know, he could build a tune mass damping system and attach it to the hands, magnetize it and accommodate a wide range of frequencies. And that's, that was around 2019 when we launched the first version of our product. All our devices are class one. They are, you know, battery free. They're not mad. They're not, they don't require any calibration.
They don't require any limitations. There are pretty much no side effects and all the magnets have been cleared to be used with the base makers, MRI scans and things like that. and DBS too. Actually, sorry guys, let's take that part out. I'm going to say it in a better way because I don't want them to be able to. Our devices have magnets in them. So sometimes
If you have a pacemaker or a deep brain simulator, we do refer our white paper to the technicians to clear that. We haven't had any negative experiences in the past in that realm, but the impacts have been very powerful. We've seen people be able to apply makeup for the first time. We've seen people be able to eat soup again, play the clarinet, use some light renovation equipment at home. Of course, we don't.
Emile Maamary
We don't endorse driving or operating any heavy machinery with our device on, but there's definitely a lot of activities that are much easier to do with our device on our hands.
Brandy Archie
Okay, now you gave us a whole lot right there and I'm gonna back us all the way up because you said the invention came from the correlation between earthquake something and shaky hands. And so I feel like you need to give us a little more information about like how, what does that mean? How does that work? What's happening when you are putting this device on?
Emile Maamary
amazing.
Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. So when you, when you build a, when you build a building and you're in an earthquake, active earthquake zone, these high rise buildings, to be precise, they, they have these counteracting forces on them, maybe swing swinging pendulums, or in some cases, they're heavy boxes of water that are counteracting.
the force of the earthquake, then these mechanisms, tend to work really, really well at one frequency and they can save a lot of lives. What we did was we found a way to make this technology work for people with hand tremors. We we miniaturized the technology. We made it as small as we could. We added a magnetic component to it. So became a magnetic twin mass damper and
You know, we filed a patent to support that technology innovation and then commercialized it because we realized that, you know, we could build something very impactful, very effective for both essential tremor and Parkinson's disease by deriving the same engineering principles and applying them to the hands in tremors.
Emilia Bourland
So this is so cool because I think it's such a unique way of approaching problem solving. And I think is one example of how sometimes medicine can really benefit from an outside perspective where we're not just in our own sort of like, you know, like repeating tunnel of hearing the same thing over and over again, because so often in medicine, we're focused on changing the person.
Brandy Archie
Mm-hmm.
Emilia Bourland
Right? Like solving the physical problem that someone is having and trying to rehabilitate or use medications or something like that. And so often there are really amazing solutions if we look at doing, you know, adaptations to the environment or using specific equipment. And so like one, just want to point out what a, what a fantastic way to creatively approach this, this problem that doesn't require
attempting to change something in a person that is incredibly complex and sometimes impossible to change, right? I want, but I want to know a little bit more about like the product itself because you also named a huge number of things that this can help people improve in with functioning. for example, you talked about like putting on makeup, eating soup. I would say that,
People often complain about eating peas too, it becomes home of eating like peas, corn, things like that. But, and then you said things like playing the clarinet. So like, does this product like apply to such a wide range of possible activities?
Emile Maamary
Yeah, so imagine you have a counteracting force swinging on your hands. If your hand pushes left to shake, we push right in live time. So that allows you to, of course without any batteries in this case, that allows you to tackle any form of activity of daily living quite effectively. Any frequency of tremors between three and a half,
And eight and a half Hertz, we can tackle it. You know, we're working to widen that range with every, every newer version of our technology. But the current one that we have on the market, we've seen tremendous results, specifically in essential tremor. Our first validation study, you saw the device worked specifically for essential tremor really, really well. 10 out of 12 people that tried it saw significant improvements in eating, drinking, writing.
Those are the ADLs we tested that day. But then when they took it home, they tried a whole wealth of other activities. And that's where we heard this feedback, know, getting dressed was easier, shaving a beard was easier, and so on.
Brandy Archie
because essentially everything is harder when your hand is shaking, right? Like we have fine motor control for reason in order to do the tasks that we need to do. And so any task that is impacted by having a shaky hand is now better impacted by using steady wear in order to like dampen those tremors. And the really important thing to like key in on what you also said, Amelia, is like...
When we come in from a medical standpoint about changing inside, that means there's two different kinds of treatments depending on what kind of tremors you have, right? And there's essential tremors have to be treated a certain way or kind of aren't really treated to be honest. And Parkinson's and its symptoms are treated a different way because the causes are different. And so this is like, whatever, you got tremors, we're counteracting the force of the tremors and there's less to be determined by because it's complex, right?
Emilia Bourland
Mm-hmm.
Emile Maamary
Absolutely.
Emile Maamary
Thank
Brandy Archie
And so I'm interested in seeing if you have like a story of an individual that can like bring this to life for us about what they were maybe doing before, what was challenging before, how that changed and like what happens.
Emile Maamary
So, I'm so sorry.
Emile Maamary
Thank you.
Yeah, absolutely. One of the best testimonials that we've heard came from one of our beta testers, Betty. She's been using every iteration of our technology along the way. And her tremors have gotten worse over time. She was the one who pointed out that, you know, with this version, I have, you know, much more dexterity because some of the older versions covered
Brandy Archie
That's cool.
Emilia Bourland
Mm-hmm.
Emile Maamary
covered the knuckles, so it limited the device. But with the current version that we have on the device, of the device, she has a lot more dexterity. She's able to cook. She's able to play her games on the iPad, pressing the right button, pressing the right place on the screen. She's able to apply makeup on for the first time, eyeliner. And she's been really, really helpful in garnering feedback.
Every step of the way, you know, one thing that we were really keen on, on, on including was user feedback. We've surveyed over a thousand people with tremors on, you know, how we can make a device even more effective for them and what kind of usability are they looking for? You know, we, we, did that in collaboration, primarily with the international central tremor foundation through surveying their population. And then we expanded on that with users, customers who.
We now have a couple of thousand of them.
Emilia Bourland
Yeah, this is really amazing stuff. And so I want to have to give people maybe, and myself too, a better idea of exactly what it means to use studyware and from that active user perspective. this isn't like, it's not a device and correct me if I'm wrong.
It's not a device with a bunch of different attachments to do a bunch of different tasks. Like this is something you actually wear on your hand and it corrects the tremors in the hand so that your hand can be dexterous enough to go and do the thing that you want it to do. Is that correct?
Emile Maamary
Absolutely. Yes.
Emilia Bourland
How much does it weigh?
Emile Maamary
So, you know, the earlier versions, they were pretty heavy. This specific version, it weighs around 10 ounces. It sits on your forehand and there's a adjustable strap to allow for a one size fits all solution. We do have one for the left hand, one for the right hand. Once you slide it on, it's pretty straightforward. It detects the frequency you're shaking at and starts working as much as it can within the range that I mentioned previously.
Emilia Bourland
Mmm.
Emilia Bourland
Mmm.
Emile Maamary
There's also a button on the device. There's only one button on it. What happens, it allows the stabilizer to eject and achieve a 30 degree angle to allow for an extreme mode. So if your tremors are a little bit more of a moderate or like early severe, that mode will really help it, you know, capture the tremor and try to counteract it.
The reason why we wanted to make sure it was battery free. The reason why we wanted to make sure was it was, does not require any calibration is, you know, we live in a world today where there are so many different ways to be distracted. So many different widgets that you're working with every day. And we wanted to make sure that the end user and the caregiver didn't have to worry about these, these issues. Like, you know, is this device charged or is this device, you know,
able to work with me all day. We wanted to make sure that they had an easy way to tackle their tremors while they're on the go. It comes in a little pouch, you can carry it with you. We tried to make it as small as possible and we keep focusing on miniaturization efficacy for future versions. One thing that I should note also is we did a small study, not with this version, but the previous version of the device in an independent living environment. And we saw
Caregivers reported that they were less involved in daily activities of eating, drinking with the patients because of the device. So this isn't only helping the patient, it's also helping their caregiver in quite a few different settings, whether they're living at home alone or they're living in a senior care facility. Everybody is satisfied with the outcomes and we're working to measure them even more effectively.
Brandy Archie
Mm-hmm.
Emilia Bourland
Mm-hmm.
Emile Maamary
with the newer versions of our technology.
Brandy Archie
Yeah, that's such a, I mean, it makes total sense, right? Because if you are not shaking as much, you don't need as much help, you can do more for yourself. And so that means even professional caregivers who are pretty efficient at the work that they do and how fast that they go, if they're feeling like they're being used less than you know, as a person, maybe caring for somebody at home, you also should be able to experience that. And then,
Emile Maamary
Thank you.
Brandy Archie
So in that, it makes it feel like the next thing that's gonna be asked is, well, I got two questions. I'm gonna ask one at a time. Is you mentioned like wearing it all day. Is there a problem with wearing it all day? Can you wear it all day? Should you wear it all day? How do you feel when you take it off after wearing it all day?
Emile Maamary
share.
Emilia Bourland
wondering about that too. Yeah, like, yeah, how do people feel when they take it off?
Emile Maamary
Yes, that's great question. we, of course, the device does offer unlimited usage. And as you can imagine, different patients are required for different amounts of time and give us feedback on this different amount of time and how it felt after and how long they like to wear it. So the average amount of time a patient is usually wearing the device is around four hours. And this really varies, you know, if you're
If you're larger individual, has larger hands, you're feeling the strain less on your hand. As a result, you might be able to wear it even longer. But then again, do you need to wear it for that long? It really depends on also your occupation, also your requirements for the day that you're going through. So it's open-ended. We try to make it as light as possible. We know that it's lighter than a can of Coca-Cola.
And the reason I give you that reference is because you're typically holding that and for a little bit of time to drink it. So that's really one of the big comparables that we gave. We wanted to make sure that we were able to tackle. And that's kind of the weight load around 300 and something grams is kind of the weight load. That's okay to be, to be wearing for a longer period of time. Once we spoke with some OTs about that too, they kind of agreed there.
And so we both designed around that too. That was a design goal for us. Under 300 grams or under 10 ounces.
Brandy Archie
Okay, so my second question, as a person who sells adaptive equipment for a living, the first question I get is, is it covered by insurance? And I know the challenges with that, but please help the people understand, like, how does that work now? What do you think is gonna happen in the future? Like, tell us about that.
Emile Maamary
Thank you.
Emile Maamary
Yeah, yeah, that's a great question. So as it stands, it's not available to be covered by insurance right now. We are working on, you know, finding the right code and fitting into that code over the next year or so that will be a top priority for us to make sure that we fit into some Medicare coverage code for the future.
I have introduced, you know, a payment plan on the website so you can get the device for, you know, a much more affordable price, something like 65 or $75 a month over one year. It's not a subscription. Once the payment is, once the one year is complete, the payments stop. And that's available on both sides of the border on Canada and the U S and of course, you know, we have a 30 day money back guarantee. have a one year warranty included. We do have a restocking fee because you know,
tariffs are coming in hot and so are all these different fulfillment fees. So we are trying to manage those too, but in general, know, the restocking fee is only 10 % of the MSR too. And we're trying to keep the prices as low as we can.
Brandy Archie
Yes.
Emilia Bourland
Is there somewhere where people can, where can people go to see, study where, like see what it looks like, see how it works, because, you know, if, this were me and I were looking for either a family member with essential tremor, if I had essential tremor, like I want to see this baby in action before I was like, you know, ready to, to jump in.
Emile Maamary
That's a great question.
Absolutely, yeah, that's a great question. So there are a couple of ways that we can do that. We can accommodate that. The first way, of course, is buy it, try it, it. The second way that we're working on is in the fall, we will be rolling out devices as demonstration kits to a certain number of clinics. It's going to be a pilot program, so we'll be doing them in a phased approach.
I don't want to get the listeners too excited, but there are a couple of hundred clinics that are going to be receiving devices. They will primarily be movement disorder clinics spread out across the United States and Canada, where people could try before they buy. They can ask their OT, ask their movement disorder specialist questions they need, receive a brochure.
collect the discount code on the brochure and head over to our website and buy it from there. But that won't be rolling out to the fall. So if you're looking for immediate relief or you wanna try it you're too excited, then of course, take advantage of our 30 day money back guarantee and the discount code I'll be disclosing at the end of this call for this particular podcast.
Brandy Archie
Awesome. So, okay, this is kind of a personal question, but I you started this because both of y'all's grandmothers had essential tremors. And have they been able to benefit from your technology? Did they get a chance to try it?
Emile Maamary
Wow.
Emilia Bourland
Dang it, Brandy, that was my question.
Emile Maamary
Yeah. Yes. Yes. Both of them have tried it. Both of them use it and they see the benefits, specifically the most recent one. Some of the earlier versions were a little bit too bulky for their hands, but this most recent one, they really enjoy using it and they see the benefit and are raved about it to their friends. It's great when you have, you know, aside from
Brandy Archie
That's why we do a podcast together.
Emile Maamary
them being family, even in our network of early users, have these champion patients who really, they wear it with pride and tell everybody in their senior care facilities about it. And those are really the ambassadors that we really, we wake up every day feeling a little bit better to hear the stories from.
Emilia Bourland
That's really, I'm so, Brandy, I'm glad you stole my question and asked. But that's so neat to hear that you started it because of your grandmothers and now your grandmothers have actually gotten to benefit from it. Like what a wonderful full circle story. So if people wanna know more about studyware, if they wanna connect with you, where can they go to do that right now?
Brandy Archie
Hahaha
Emile Maamary
Absolutely. Yeah. We're on all the socials. Our handle is steadyware. It's a steady with an I and our website is steadyware.com. It's S T E A D I W E A R.com. My email is emil at steadyware.com. You're more than welcome to reach out. If you are a member of a clinic looking for a demonstration kit, definitely the good time to reach out is now because we are compiling all of that information.
We'll ask you to fill in a short survey and that we will put you in the queue as you can imagine. A couple of hundred clinics is not an easy feat, but we'll get to your request. And of course, the free demo kits are still available. If you're a patient, you're more than welcome to head over to our website, an end user or a family caregiver. You're more than welcome to head over to our website, place an order. You can use a discount code care lab for a hundred dollars off.
And that'll be available from today until the end of the year too. And yeah, we're all, can reach us all, there's a Shopify inbox chat. You can reach us live on there or our phone number is triple eight five zero five zero nine nine two.
Brandy Archie
Well, we're so grateful for you coming to talk about this really excellent and pioneering technology for like a super challenging problem. And so I hope that as many people as possible are able to access it. And I know there's tons of barriers to like producing as many as you want to be able to produce to get them as many people as you want to get them to. And we hope to be good partners in the future about doing that. And
Emilia Bourland
Mm-hmm.
Brandy Archie
We're thankful that you created this and are bringing it to the world. So thank you for being on.
Emile Maamary
It's my pleasure. Closing note, if you are a veteran and you suffer of hand tremors, our device is fully covered by the VA and it's available on our website. Just give us a shout and we'll refer you to a distributor in your area specifically for that channel. yeah, we're excited to roll this device out next month and get some more feedback. Thanks again for the opportunity and...
Brandy Archie
Nice.
Emile Maamary
happy to answer any further questions by email or any of the listeners.
Emilia Bourland
Amiel, thank you so much for being on this episode of Care Lab. Dear listener, if you made it to the end of this episode, please make sure to take a second to like, subscribe, follow us. Please share a comment, leave a review. These are all the best ways that we can continue to grow Care Lab and be able to bring more valuable content to caregivers like you. Until next time, we'll see you right back here on Care Lab. Bye.
Brandy Archie
Bye, everybody.
Emile Maamary
See you.
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