Can you provide a brief overview of Madglove and what inspired you to start your own business?
I did my Bachelor’s in Physiotherapy in Cluj, Romania. A very common trend with physiotherapy is that people come back after a couple of weeks without having done anything at home and then a lot of the progress that you got to in the clinic gets lost. I really wanted to kind of bridge that gap between clinical rehabilitation and home stay.
Back then, I was working with stroke patients. A consequence of brain injuries is muscle spasticity. In strokes, for instance, muscle spasticity leads to involuntary contractions. At the hand level, this often results in a dysfunctional position, making it extremely challenging for individuals to open their hands. Everyday tasks become significantly more difficult, impacting the quality of their daily lives. During my Bachelor’s I developed the first prototype of the glove. The main goal is that the glove can be used independently. Patients don't need support to use it, and that's important for them to become more independent.
After that, I moved to Amsterdam to study a Master’s in Human Movement Sciences at VU and that’s when I started to develop Madglove more. The glove provides support to the patients, allowing them to focus on closing their hands and engaging in specific tasks. This additional support simplifies the task. As users progress in their training, we can gradually reduce the support, accelerating the learning process. Our goal is to explore the feasibility of this approach in the stroke population, assessing its effectiveness in enhancing learning outcomes.
How did the course Entrepreneurship in Human Sciences contribute to the development of Madglove?
I chose the course Entrepreneurship as an elective during my Master’s and it was the first very practical course that I took. Throughout the course, the task was to create a business based on an idea rooted in Human Movement Sciences. The course was definitely a catalyser for us. It was the first place where we gave structure to our ideas, providing us with resources to kickstart our business. These resources helped us formalize our concept in a manner that was easy to present, making it convincing to others that our venture could be both impactful and profitable. During the course, the business idea got shaped up. We also had assistant professors that gave us a lot of feedback.
The course was a turning point for me. Even though I didn't have a set plan initially, the Entrepreneurship course initiated a snowball effect of opportunities and support within the VU Entrepreneurial ecosystem.
