“Engineering school taught me how to solve problems. Parkinson’s patients guided me on how to actually spot real problems.” For Amey Desai, that difference has shaped his life’s work.
An electrical and electronics engineer, he completed his bachelor’s in engineering from BITS Pilani, Goa, in 2018. The story that began as a fascination with electronics, neuroscience, and human movement eventually led him towards one of the everyday challenges faced by people living with Parkinson’s disease: the struggle to walk.
Today, Amey is the founder of Lifespark Technologies, where he and his team are trying to make everyday movement easier for people living with neurological conditions.
One of their solutions is ‘WALK’, a wearable device that helps people with Parkinson’s when their feet suddenly seem to “freeze” and taking the next step becomes difficult. The team is also developing PATHFINDER, a digital platform that tracks how a person is moving, identifies their risk of falling, and helps doctors support their rehabilitation at home.
But the idea behind WALK did not begin with a device.
It began with a question about how the human body moves.
His first clue came from brainwaves
The 30-year-old’s interest in the nervous system goes back to his engineering years. While studying at BITS Pilani, he interned with Dr Veeky Baths, whose laboratory had recently acquired the first electroencephalogram system on campus.
Today, Amey is the founder of Lifespark Technologies, where he and his team are trying to make everyday movement easier for people living with neurological conditions.
“For me, the idea of deciphering brainwaves was fascinating,” he recalls.
That curiosity drew him into research on muscle signals, motor control and rehabilitation technologies. As he studied mobility disorders, he began to understand how conditions such as Parkinson’s can shape something as ordinary, and essential, as moving through the day.
Then the subject became personal. Towards the end of college, Amey’s grandfather suffered a fall and hip fracture. Later, his maternal grandfather was diagnosed with Parkinson’s.
What had existed in research papers was now unfolding within his own family. Watching someone close to him struggle with movement changed the way Amey understood the problem.
“As I interacted with patients, clinicians, physiotherapists and researchers, I realised that mobility is not restricted to only movement,” he says. “It is independence, dignity, confidence and participation in society.”
That understanding would eventually become central to Lifespark Technologies.
When the next step won’t come
At first, Amey thought the problem he was trying to solve was relatively straightforward. People were struggling to walk, so perhaps they needed better assistive devices or rehabilitation tools.
Then he began understanding freezing of gait.
For some people with Parkinson’s, the legs are physically capable of moving, but the person can suddenly find themselves unable to initiate a step. It can happen while starting to walk, turning, or navigating a familiar space.
“The problem was not only muscle strength or mechanical movement. It was a breakdown in the communication between neurological intention and physical action,” he explains.
His work at the University of Leeds, including research with Dr Samit Chakrabarty on muscle signals and movement, refined that understanding. Walking might appear automatic, but it involves constant coordination between the brain, spinal cord, muscles, and sensory systems.
“Human walking arises from continuous communication between perception, intention and action,” he says.
That led to another important observation.
Some people who freeze while walking on a flat surface can move surprisingly well in other situations. Stairs, for instance, can sometimes be easier for them. Visual patterns or sounds can also help.
Their muscles have not suddenly become stronger, or their balance has not suddenly improved. Instead, something about the way their brains process information has changed.
“That was a turning-point moment for me,” he says. “It suggested that technology did not necessarily need to replace walking. It could instead facilitate the nervous system and help people access movement patterns that already exist.”
That insight became the basis for WALK. Instead of simply giving people a signal to take the next step, the device was designed to help the nervous system respond and gradually relearn the movement, something Amey believes is especially important for people with Parkinson’s.
Building a wearable that responds when walking freezes
WALK is a compact wearable device strapped to the lower legs. The device keeps track of how a person is walking. When it senses that they may be freezing, it gives gentle vibrations and mild electrical stimulation to the legs. These signals act as cues for the brain and can help the person take the next step and continue walking.
So, instead of physically moving the person’s legs, the device helps the brain reconnect with the movement needed to take a step.
Turning that idea into something people could actually wear and use, however, took years of research, testing and refinement.
Five years from an idea to a working device
In 2018, Amey began studying mobility impairments, assistive walking technologies, and motor control in neurological conditions. During 2019 and 2020, he went more detailed into movement disorders, rehabilitation science, sensory cueing, and human gait.
In May 2021, the first functional prototype of WALK was built.
The following year involved initial testing with users and repeated improvements based on what patients experienced. During 2022 and 2023, Lifespark expanded its clinical collaborations while refining the device’s architecture, usability, and reliability.
The 30-year-old’s interest in the nervous system goes back to his engineering years.
Formal clinical validation followed during 2023 and 2024, generating evidence around WALK’s effectiveness for freezing of gait. In 2024, the company achieved regulatory and certification milestones and expanded deployment.
By 2025 and 2026, the focus had moved towards scaling access through clinicians, therapists and partner organisations, while Lifespark was also developing PATHFINDER, which allows doctors to remotely monitor patients’ walking patterns and adjust therapy as needed.
For Amey, however, the biggest milestones were not the technical ones.
“The biggest defining moments were when patients demonstrated meaningful improvements in the way they moved through their everyday lives,” he says.
Those moments changed how he viewed the device. “They redefined WALK from an engineering project into something much larger.”
They also changed the way Amey thought about success. A device could perform well on paper, but what mattered to patients was what it allowed them to do in their everyday lives.
The real test was never the lab
Engineering comes with its own ways of measuring success: accuracy, performance and specifications. But as Amey spent more time with patients, he began to see that those numbers could tell only part of the story.
“The question to answer really is, ‘Can I go with my grandchild to the park?’”
For someone living with Parkinson’s, success could mean walking to the bathroom independently at night, attending a family event without worrying about falling, or making their way through a crowded street without anxiety.
During testing, Amey saw how freezing episodes could shape where people went and even whether they chose to go at all. Some had begun planning their lives around the possibility of freezing. When moving became easier, the change began to show up in other parts of their lives too.
One experience stayed with him.
“I can now access the hall when guests are present without being embarrassed,” a patient told the team.
For Amey, the significance of those words was clear.
“That opens up a social life,” he says. “It is significantly more than just being able to walk.”
Experiences like this also shaped how the team refined WALK. Comfort, simplicity, ease of use, social acceptability and consistency became as important as technical performance.
There were times when caregivers and the team could see improvements in videos, but the patients themselves did not feel any different.
“They somehow didn’t,” he says.
That gap mattered. What showed up on video had to translate into something the person could feel in their own life. The team began paying closer attention to what each patient actually wanted to be able to do, and structured their journey around those goals. This, in turn, helped improve adherence.
A device can work and still fail the person using it
That experience also challenged one of Amey’s early assumptions. “I initially assumed that better technology automatically creates better outcomes,” he says.
Patients taught him otherwise.
A sophisticated solution can still fail if it is uncomfortable, intimidating, difficult to use, or disruptive to someone’s routine. In healthcare, the technology also has to fit into the workflows of doctors, physiotherapists, caregivers and other professionals.
“We are transferring a process, not a product,” he says.
That thinking now extends beyond WALK.
Lifespark is also developing PATHFINDER, a digital platform intended to measure mobility and fall risk and support rehabilitation at home. The larger idea is to make care more trackable and personalised between clinical visits.
‘Innovation is about people’
More than 350 families have now benefited from WALK. However, Amey sees that number not as an endpoint, but as a reminder of how much remains to be done.
As he studied mobility disorders, he began to understand how conditions such as Parkinson’s can shape something as ordinary, and essential, as moving through the day.
“The biggest problem is access,” he says.
For people living with mobility impairments, effective solutions can remain out of reach or be difficult to incorporate into routine care. The engineer believes home-based and preventive care need to become a larger part of how chronic conditions are managed.
His ambition for the organisation extends beyond a single medical device. “Over the next few years, I want Lifespark to become a guardian system for every person on Earth,” he says.
He imagines homes, consumer technology and even clothing eventually helping identify changes in health early, highlighting problems and escalating them to the traditional healthcare system when needed.
For now, that vision is taking form through technologies such as WALK and PATHFINDER, while the company continues to work with clinicians, therapists, researchers, and families.
Engineering taught him to fix things, and patients taught him what mattered. He entered engineering fascinated by how technology could understand and respond to the human body. Parkinson’s patients taught him to ask whether he was fixing the problem that mattered to the person living with it.
“Every data point represents a person, every symptom affects a family, and every improvement in mobility can restore a measure of freedom,” he says.
In 2018, Amey began studying mobility impairments, assistive walking technologies, and motor control in neurological conditions.
The lesson has stayed with him as the organisation has moved from research to prototypes, clinical validation and helping hundreds of families. “Innovation is not ultimately about devices, algorithms or patents. It is about people,” he adds.
And perhaps that is the most important shift in Amey’s journey. His story has taken him from studying the mechanics of movement to understanding the human lives that depend on it.
If you’d like to spend a little more time with Amey’s journey, you can read ourdetailed story on WALK here. And if you’re curious about the work he and his team are continuing to build, you can find more atLifespark Technologies.
All pictures courtesy Amey Desai.
