StrideLink Brings Gait Analysis Home with Wearable Tech
Most of us take thousands of steps each day without a second thought. Yet those steps hold clues about our health: how we walk – our gait – can reveal issues with balance, recovery from injuries, and even neurological conditions. Traditionally, analyzing a patient’s gait meant an expert eyeballing how they walk in a clinic, a method that is subjective and prone to error. High-tech gait labs with $40,000 equipment exist but are bulky and impractical for routine use. This is the gap that Atlanta-based startup StrideLink aims to fill by bringing lab-level gait analysis to a pair of wearable sensors and a smartphone app.
Founded by Georgia Tech alumna Marzeah “Zea” Khorramabadi, StrideLink’s story began as many startups do – with a personal realization and a big question. Khorramabadi, originally from Birmingham, Alabama, was a computer engineering student fascinated by medical devices and wearables. In the summer of 2020, she and her friend (and eventual co-founder) Cassandra McIltrot, a biomedical engineering student, discussed McIltrot’s research on post-stroke rehabilitation. Walking ability is a crucial indicator of our health especially during recovery. “We thought to ourselves — why don't we measure this?” McIltrot said of that moment. As Khorramabadi later put it, “It all boils down to how we walk”. The insight that a subtle change in gait can signal a looming fall or a slow recovery planted the seed for StrideLink.
In 2021, Khorramabadi took the idea to Georgia Tech’s CREATE-X Startup Launch accelerator, teaming up with McIltrot and Neel Narvekar, StrideLink’s CTO, to turn their project into a company. The CREATE-X program pushed the young team to conduct intensive customer discovery. “Before even attempting to design a product, [we] spent six months interviewing various experts” to learn how they assess gait and what they need. To refine their concept, the StrideLink team spoke with various clinicians, patients, and biomechanics researchers. Khorramabadi noted that many engineers make the mistake of building first and asking questions later. “A lot of people design first without talking to their customer, but that’s the biggest mistake you can make,” she said, emphasizing how those early conversations shaped StrideLink’s solution. By the end of spring, the team had developed a prototype good enough to win “Best Overall Project” at Georgia Tech’s 2021 Capstone Design Expo. More importantly, they had defined a clear need for their product in healthcare.
StrideLink was formally incorporated in 2022 and secured $1.2 million in pre-seed funding from angel investors, the Georgia Tech Foundation, and Dorm Room Fund. Those backers, many experienced in orthopedic devices, not only provided capital but also connections in StrideLink’s first target market: orthopedics. With funding, the team (now led by Khorramabadi as CEO, with McIltrot as COO, and Narvekar as CTO) set out to validate their technology outside the lab. “Our team was committed to developing a product that matches the accuracy of gold-standard gait analysis tools, while remaining accessible and effortless for everyday patients to use,” Khorramabadi said, recalling an early test of their prototype against a high-end gait lab. Collaborating with a physician at Emory University, they ran validation studies tracking real patients through surgery and recovery. They measured gait patterns in foot and ankle surgery patients before an operation and then at intervals up to 12 months post-op. This allowed StrideLink to build a unique dataset of how walking metrics change during rehabilitation, proving the sensors’ clinical value.
StrideLink’s shoelace-sized sensor attaches to a shoe to record detailed gait metrics. In trials, patients wear the sensors for a few minutes daily, and the data syncs to an app for analysis.
At its core, StrideLink’s product is a wearable gait analysis kit: two small sensors that clip onto a person’s shoes and record the nuanced details of each step. The system uses inertial measurement and custom algorithms to capture the whole gait cycle – essentially an EKG-like trace of one’s walking pattern. In layman’s terms, it measures how fast and how evenly your feet hit the ground, how long each foot stays in contact, and other aspects of your stride. All that data is sent to a smartphone application where patients and their doctors can see trends over time. Importantly, StrideLink makes gait tracking objective. “Currently, measurements of physical function are untracked and unmeasured in the majority of cases. Assessments in lower extremity orthopedics - a market we are really focusing on - benefits from having this information alongside more traditional imaging like an X-ray or an MRI,” Khorramabadi explained. StrideLink provides quantitative metrics on a patient’s mobility, insights missing from post-surgery checkups and physical therapy evaluations. This is more informative for doctors and motivating for patients who can see their progress (or spot problems) day by day.
After earning an FDA registration for its device in late 2024, StrideLink began rollout. Today, StrideLink is partnered with a handful of orthopedic practices in the Southeast, including clinics in Georgia, Alabama, and Florida, to pilot the sensor kit with patients. These early pilots let the team gather feedback on how the system fits into clinical workflows, its value to physicians, and patient ease-of-use. Patients found the device easy for their at-home rehab, and doctors began seeing the potential of data-driven recovery tracking. Demand quickly outstripped what the small startup could supply. “We have a whole waitlist of physicians and practices that are eager to adopt this in their practice,” Khorramabadi reported, highlighting the strong interest from clinicians. Several clinics have already signed letters of intent to adopt StrideLink as a standard tool once it’s more broadly available.
Buoyed by positive pilot results, StrideLink is now looking to scale up. The company is raising a seed funding round to ramp up production and expand its reach. While orthopedics is the initial focus – patients recovering from knee, hip, or foot surgeries – the startup’s vision goes further. “One of the things we’re looking at doing over the next 24 months is expanding into those other healthcare verticals… neuro and pediatrics,” Khorramabadi said. The core need for better mobility monitoring is just as pressing in neurology and pediatrics: stroke survivors and people with Parkinson’s could benefit from continuous gait tracking, as could children with conditions like cerebral palsy that affect movement. By adapting its platform for these groups, StrideLink sees an opportunity to fill significant gaps in how clinicians monitor progression and therapy effectiveness outside hospital settings.
From a student project sparked by a simple question, StrideLink has grown into a venture-backed company on the cusp of changing orthopedic care. It reflects a broader trend in healthcare toward remote patient monitoring and personalized rehab. If Khorramabadi and her team have their way, analyzing your gait might soon be as simple as lacing up your shoes.