What if your knee could tell you when to stop?
Kneely is a smart compression sleeve being developed to continuously monitor knee loading, give real-time feedback, and provide doctors with objective data between appointments. The device is in early research and development — it is not CE-marked, not registered with Swissmedic, and not yet available for patient use.
Between appointments, doctors have zero data.
Juvenile Osteochondritis Dissecans (JOCD) affects the knee cartilage of children aged 10–17. The standard treatment is simple: "reduce activity." But this instruction is vague, unmonitorable, and psychologically damaging.
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 experience documented 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.
“With 85% healing, he's been released to do light soccer. No contact and no running. Just light ball touches. It's hard to determine what level of impact he is doing in the moment.”
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, during 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 builds a 3D model of their specific knee anatomy and lesion location for precise load mapping.
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 build a patient-specific knee model — mapping the exact anatomy and lesion location.
Simple Daily Calibration
Each morning, two simple poses (stand straight, extend knee) take under 15 seconds. The app guides the process with a visual timer.
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
Two tiny sensors embedded in a soft compression sleeve — tracking knee angle and impact forces continuously, all day long.
Instant Haptic Alert
When loading exceeds the personalised threshold, a gentle vibration warns within half a second. No phone needed, no screen to check.
The Companion App
A daily Knee Budget 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
8+ hours of continuous monitoring — enough for school and afternoon sport on a single charge.
No Phone Required
24-hour on-device data buffer. The sleeve works independently and syncs when the phone is nearby.
Activity-Aware
Automatically classifies walking, running, stairs, sport, and rest — adjusting thresholds and power accordingly.
Knee Budget App
A gamified daily load score shows children how much activity their knee can still handle — 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
Only ~25g of electronics added to a standard compression sleeve. Total weight comparable to a regular padded knee sleeve.
Two perspectives, one device.
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 JOCD 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.
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: MRI-personalised biomechanical models, real-time load estimation, and 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 the first wearable knee load monitor designed specifically for children with JOCD — and generate the real-world data that could change how this condition is treated.
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