Smart Knee Care for Young Athletes
What if your knee could tell you when to stop?
A smart compression sleeve for children and adolescents. Continuous knee-load monitoring, real-time feedback for the child, and objective data for the doctor between appointments. Starting with JOCD; designed to extend to other paediatric knee conditions. In early research and development.
Between appointments, doctors have zero data.
For children and adolescents (10–17) with load-driven knee conditions, the standard guidance is "reduce activity": vague, unmonitorable, and psychologically damaging. Our first clinical focus is Juvenile Osteochondritis Dissecans (JOCD), where the gap between "take it easy" and real life is sharpest.
Vague Guidance
"Take it easy" is not a treatment plan. There is no quantitative definition of what is safe and what is too much.
Zero Monitoring
Between 6–12 week MRI appointments, doctors have no data on how the knee was actually used. Compliance is invisible.
Mental Health Impact
Adolescents forced to withdraw from sport and peers often experience negative effects on mental health and social development.
Unanswered Science
Whether cartilage damage is driven by single impacts or cumulative loading is unknown. No measurement tool has existed to find out.
What Clinicians Tell Us
What knee surgeons told us about OCD care.
say earlier objective load data could change when they escalate a patient to surgery, turning monitoring into a treatment-timing decision.
rank activity-compliance monitoring, knowing whether a patient stays within prescribed limits between visits, among the most valuable data they could have.
would consider prescribing a clinically validated version to suitable patients. On a 1 to 5 likelihood scale they averaged 4.1, with none below 3.
Aggregated findings from our expert survey of paediatric orthopaedic and knee/sports surgeons in 7 countries (n = 16; May 2026).
A smart sleeve that fills the data gap.
Kneely is a soft compression knee sleeve with embedded sensors. Worn all day, under school clothes, during sport, and in daily life, it gives children, parents, and doctors the information they've never had.
Real-Time Protection
A gentle vibration alerts the child when knee loading exceeds their personalised safety threshold, set by their surgeon.
Objective Data for Doctors
Kneely logs load data continuously and generates clinical reports showing weeks of trends, peak forces, and activity breakdowns.
Personalised to Each Patient
Using the patient's existing MRI, Kneely personalises itself to their specific knee anatomy.
Designed for Children
Soft, lightweight, no rigid components. Looks and feels like a regular knee sleeve, designed to be worn without social stigma.
From MRI to daily protection in four steps.
MRI Personalisation
Your child's existing diagnostic MRI is used to personalise the device to their specific knee anatomy.
Quick Morning Setup
When the sleeve is put on, the app gets it aligned to the child's knee in seconds. No buttons to press, no settings to remember.
Wear and Forget
The sleeve monitors continuously throughout the day. A gentle vibration alerts when loading is too high. No phone connection needed.
Doctor Gets the Data
At the next appointment, the surgeon sees weeks of objective data: load trends, peak forces, activity breakdowns, and threshold events.
See how Kneely works throughout the day.
The Smart Sleeve
Embedded sensors in a soft compression sleeve, continuously tracking how the knee is being used, all day long.
Instant Haptic Alert
When loading exceeds the personalised threshold, a gentle vibration warns instantly. No phone needed, no screen to check.
The Companion App
A daily activity score shows remaining capacity at a glance. Activity tracking, alert history, and clinical reports, all in one place.
Built for real life, not just the lab.
All-Day Battery
All-day battery, enough for school and afternoon sport on a single charge.
No Phone Required
The sleeve works independently and syncs with your phone when nearby. No constant phone connection required.
Activity-Aware
Automatically adapts to your activity throughout the day.
Daily Activity Score
A simple daily score helps children understand how much activity is still safe. Empowering, not restricting.
Clinical Reports
Exportable summaries designed to be reviewed in a 5-minute appointment slot. Peak forces, trends, and activity breakdowns.
Ultra-Lightweight
Lightweight, with total weight comparable to a regular padded knee sleeve.
Two perspectives, one platform.
For Patients & Families
A daily "Knee Budget" makes managing activity intuitive: green means go, yellow means slow down. Parents get clear daily summaries and alert history, replacing guesswork with informed conversations about the day.
For Clinicians
Objective load data between appointments. Trend lines over weeks, peak forces per session, activity classification, in a format designed for clinical review in minutes.
Why we're building Kneely.
Every kid with a healing knee hears the same words: slow down, be careful, stop. But nobody tells them how much is actually okay. Nobody gives them a way to keep going, safely. That gap between "take it easy" and real life is where Kneely was born: first for children with JOCD, built to serve more paediatric knee conditions over time.
The name says it all: Knee, friendly. Not a restriction, but a companion. A quiet helper that sits with you through the school day, watches out for you during sport, and tells you when it's time to ease off. Like a friend who knows your knee better than anyone, because it's built on your own MRI, your own anatomy, your own limits.
Behind that simplicity is serious science: personalised to your anatomy via MRI, with thresholds set by your doctor, not a generic algorithm. But for the kid wearing it, none of that matters. What matters is: green means go, orange means slow down, and no one has to sit on the sidelines wondering whether they could have kept playing.
Our Vision
To replace "reduce sport as much as possible" with something better: personalised, data-driven guidance that lets every child stay as active as their knee safely allows.
Our Mission
To build and validate a wearable platform for monitoring how children and adolescents load their knees. We begin with Juvenile Osteochondritis Dissecans (JOCD) and design for what comes next: other load-driven paediatric knee conditions where today's standard guidance is essentially "do less", and no one can say how much less is enough.
Help shape Kneely.
Your experience or expertise directly shapes what we build, and what it measures.
Share your experience
We're building a device specifically for the OCD community. To get it right, your experience matters. Patients, former patients and parents: 5 minutes, anonymous, no email required.
Take the patient surveyShare your expertise
We're building a wearable sensor device for patients with osteochondritis dissecans (OCD). Your clinical experience helps us understand which features actually matter in practice. 5 minutes, anonymous by default.
Take the expert surveyOther inquiries or partnerships? Email us at contact@kneely.ch