'We're helping the treadmill be smarter, to be responsive to the person'

The invention was initially developed as a potential therapeutic device to help stroke patients…

The treadmill operates so users can adjust the speed of the belt without pressing any buttons. Instead, users simply speed up or slow down on the treadmill, and the belt speed adjusts accordingly.

Doug Miller had no idea his long career in cellular technology would lead him to run a company responsible for self-pacing treadmills. And yet, here he is, at the helm of IMPOWER Health, a new health tech business in the UNeTech incubator.

Stroke rehabilitation is hard. The damage a stroke causes to the brain and nervous system is extensive, sometimes irreversible, but often repaired through painstaking rehabilitation. That rehabilitation is hard work. The asymmetrical way a stroke victim’s body works complicates rehabilitation. Even walking on a treadmill is difficult when one side of the victim’s body doesn’t move as well as the other. A group of students at the University of Nebraska at Omaha found the problem of matching treadmill pace enormously challenging.