Falak Ameesh Patel
Pharmacist and medical device engineer. I make small health tools that work offline and keep your data on your phone, and I designed StrideMate, a walking-assist exoskeleton.
- M.Tech
- Medical Device Innovation, IIT Hyderabad
- B.Pharm
- SPPU, and a registered pharmacist
- Based in
- Bharuch, Gujarat
Next to this, a small code editor types out short excerpts from my own public code: padachar's step goal maths, anukalpa's medicine strength matching, the QR label format from my B.Pharm thesis, the gait asymmetry measure from the StrideMate dashboard, and the first question of Device Class Finder.
01About
I build assistive medical hardware, and I am interested in why so little of it reaches patients. The device is rarely the hard part. The path from a working prototype to something a health system will actually buy and use is where most of these projects stop, including mine.
02Projects
03StrideMate
A wearable lower-limb assistive exoskeleton. My M.Tech thesis at IIT Hyderabad, 2025-26, supervised by Prof. Safvan Palathingal and Prof. Renu John.
Complete and on hold since October 2026. Firmware v1.4.0, gait dashboard v1.1.0 (final), CAD files under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.
StrideMate
Other
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Drag to rotate, right-drag to pan, Ctrl/⌘ + scroll to zoom, double-click to reset.
All CAD files: github.com/falakpat3l/Stridemate_3D_files_IITH (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).
The design problem came from a month of clinical immersion at Kamineni Hospital, L.B. Nagar, in December 2024: orthopaedic and neurology wards, most working days, around 180 hours in total. Patients recovering from stroke or orthopaedic injury depend on a model that does not scale: one physiotherapist, a few patients per session, and no record of what happens between visits.
The device runs two ESP32 controllers talking over I²C. A time-of-flight sensor on the shin gives a continuous velocity estimate; IMUs supply orientation and gait phase. Together they drive assistive torque during the swing phase. Housings are 3-D printed, thigh links are CNC-machined aluminium, and a browser dashboard logs gait data continuously rather than only moving the leg.
- Mass
- under 4 kg
- Assistive torque
- about 10 N·m, lateral
- Target price
- ₹40,000, against ₹5 lakh to ₹60 lakh ($5000 to $60,000 USD) for imported equivalents
- Classification
- Class B medical device
It did not reach anyone. Getting to production needed roughly ₹5 crore ($500,000 USD) in pre-seed capital against established competition, and that money was not available. The venture was wound down and the technology transferred to IIT Hyderabad under institute policy. A device that worked, at a fraction of the imported price, for a market of tens of thousands of patients in India. None of that was enough. Working out what the gap is actually made of is what I want to do next.
04Other work
- Transtibial and hip prostheses. Below-knee prosthesis assembly and hip joint geometry, modelled in Fusion 360.
- Third Thumb. A 3-D printed extra digit, built to see how quickly someone learns to control a limb they did not grow.
- Exoskeleton subassemblies. Motor housings, hip joints and sensor mounts, designed around parts available in India.
All of these turn in the 3-D viewer above, under "Other".
05Writing
- 2026StrideMate: Wearable Lower-Limb Assistive ExoskeletonFA Patel. Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad
- 2023Application of QR Codes and Near-Field Communication Technology in Clinical TrialsFA Patel. Dr. D. Y. Patil College of Pharmacy, Akurdi (Affiliated to SPPU, formerly Pune University)
More on Google Scholar.
06Background
Biodesign, clinical immersion, device standards and regulation, and IP at IIT Hyderabad. Biostatistics and research methodology, and pharmaceutical jurisprudence, at SPPU. Before that, regulatory affairs (FDA and EMA dossiers), quality assurance under GMP, and market research using surveys and focus groups.