Meet Tubus Technology: A low-tech device with a high impact on people with mobility disabilities

Tubus Technology is a Danish company developing simple and smart solutions to empower people with mobility disabilities in their independence. Its product, TubusOne, is a low-tech communication device used for navigating on tablets and smartphones. It works just like a finger on all touchscreen devices and enables people with arms and hands disabilities to use touchscreen devices by simply puffing slightly into a tube.

“TubusOne creates independency” says Lizanne Svane, founder and partner at Tubus Technology.

It all started in 2013 at the University of Aalborg in Denmark where eight students, Lizanne included, participated in an innovation workshop where they had to solve Christian's problem - a paralyzed man who wanted to write to his girlfriend without the help of his mother. This is when TubusOne was invented. "All Christian ever wanted was the freedom to write to his girlfriend without any help from others. TubusOne gave him the opportunity to do that."

“We want to make life easier for people with mobility disabilities and enable them to use digital solutions with touchscreen interface as anybody else. Today it requires so many special skills to use a computer for a person with mobility disabilities, it should not be a struggle to use a smartphone. We want to embrace basic things with basic solutions: we have developed a very ground-level device, to simplify the users experience.” says Lizanne.

In 2017, Tubus Technology became a HeadStart winner, “an important milestone for us; we would not have been able to finish all we started without EIT Health."

The EIT Health HeadStart Funding Programme support enabled TubusOne to CE-mark their product, get FDA approval, make new partnerships, hire new people and move to the next level. “It also enabled us to investigate and evaluated our Product Market Fit in many European countries and select the most interesting to start commercialising process."

“We have reached yet another important milestone: TubusOne has undergone a Welfare technological Assessment made by a Danish Hospital, a study of how our product works with users in hospital settings: TubusOne performed very well. This is a powerful receipt of the difference our product makes for users.”

TubusOne truly impacts health and wellness of people with mobility disabilities. The main drivers for TubusOne are the user benefits: self-empowerment and independence.

"People tell me they are part of daily life again; they can order food online themselves, they feel that they can contribute like anybody else, but most of all, as TubusOne works as quick as a finger, users get the feeling that they can communicate as fast as they think, even though they are not able to use their hand."