About Us

Lambda Health System was founded in 2015 in Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland. We want to democratize advanced robotic assistance for rehabilitation of the locomotor system.

We develop solutions to help people recover from trauma associated to the locomotor system

We do our best to make it as easy as possible to use for both patients and therapists

We help therapists enhance their programs with new and innovative approaches.

And we do it in a cost effective way making it accessible for the majority of rehabilitation centers.

Board of Directors & Management

Jean-Marc Wismer
Chairman of the Board of Directors

Formerly executive with Medtronic, Lysis, Sensimed, KB Medical and MindMaze SA. Jean-Marc has over 30 years of experience in international growth management and financing. Jean-Marc was founder and CEO of Sensimed, then took the position of CEO with KB Medical which he led to a successful trade sale to Globus Medical. Jean-Marc later joined the Swiss neurotechnology unicorn MindMaze as COO where he was instrumental in the company’s digital transformation, in a $230m Series B financing round with leading financial and strategic investors, and in structuring the company as an agile organization recipient of the 2022 Deloitte Best Managed Company award. Jean-Marc holds an MSc in Electrical Engineering from EPFL and an MBA from IMD.

Carole Miller
Board Member

Carole has 20+ years of business experience in investment banking at Credit Agricole where she held various management positions in trading, sales, marketing and strategic business development. In the course of her career, she developed close relationships with institutional clients in France and Switzerland. More recently, Carole has been working with Netmentora in Barcelona conducting due diligence and coaching in business development for the non-profit organization. Carole is also a mentor at the Masters in Technology and Entrepreneurship (MTS) at EPFL in Lausanne and Business Angel.

Yannick Charotton
CEO & founder

Yannick holds a Master of Sciences in Engineering and a CAS in CA/RA/QA for medical devices. He has always been active in socially impacting projects and founded a few start-ups from a young age. Among other things, he had the opportunity to develop and commercialize technologies to improve electric car charging, safety for public transports, or promote physical activity.

Ensuring the growth of Lambda is a logical next step in his entrepreneurial career, with the greatest challenges to be met in a project at the heart of today's preoccupations, where physical rehabilitation is ever more present and necessary.

Aurélien Fauquex
COO & founder, Board Member

Aurélien holds a Master of Sciences in mechanical engineering and was initially in charge of the mechanical development of the device. He later had the privilege of working as a research collaborator in the Neuropsychology and Neurorehabilitation Service of the University Hospital of Lausanne (CHUV). This clinical experience motivated him to bring the Lambda to the patients. He was then co-investigator in the pilot clinical trial of the first prototype. Aurélien is also a lecturer in various medical device development courses for BAS, MAS and CAS students.

Co-founders

Dr. Rolf Frischknecht
Physician in Physical Rehabilitation

Rolf trained as a specialist in Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine in Geneva and London with a special interest in neurorehabilitation. He joined the Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV) in 1995 where he created a unit for neurorehabilitation and started to work on rehabilitation robotics together with EPFL. He became a tenured lecturer and researcher at Lausanne University in 2007 and served on the European Board of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine as President from 2012 to 2014. Rolf joined the LHS development team at the HEIG-VD in 2012 as a medical advisor and is in charge of the clinical aspects of the LHS.

Nicolas Perret
Physiotherapist in Neurorehabilitation

Nicolas is a physical therapist specialised in neurorehabilitation. He is currently a teacher in the University of Health Science (HESAV) in Lausanne. He works with neurological patients since 2004 and his research interests mainly focus on repetitive movements, spasticity and robotics. Nicolas joined the LHS team in 2013 as physical therapist advisor and is in charge of the training aspect of the company. His input is especially important for the development of the pedal, the seat and the user interface.

Dr. Carl Schmitt
Biomechanics Expert

Carl has been involved in the development of medical devices for 12 years. During his Ph.D. Thesis at EPFL, on “Functional orthosis with parallel and serial kinematics for the rehabilitation of the lower limbs”, he specialized in biomechanics and invented the first concept of the Lambda robot. He is currently Professor at the HEIG-VD in the Biomedical Engineering Group and continues his research in robotics applied to rehabilitation as head of the biomechanics laboratory.

Dr. Michel Lauria
Robotics and Control Expert

Michel is a researcher in the field of robotics and control with more than 15 years of experience. He specialized in Physical Human Robot Interaction. His past achievements include the development of a new class of High Performance Actuators for Interaction and specialized Impedance/Admittance Control Schemes. He is currently a professor at Hepia Geneva, member of the HES-SO University of Applied Sciences and Arts in western Switzerland. Michel joined the LHS development team in 2009 and developed all the Model Based Motion Control Schemes.

Advisors

Prof. Dr. Francis Degache
UNIL & HESAV Professor

Francis is currently an associate professor at the University of Health Sciences (HESAV) in Lausanne. He did his PhD on different training modalities on chronic heart failure patients. He is currently developing new methods of valuations and training under hypoxia conditions in disabled subjects. He specialized in “physical activity and health”. He aims at investigating the effect of regular physical activity on health in different kinds of diseases. Recently, he used the hypoxia model to explain neurophysiologic process (i.e. postural stability) in healthy subjects. Professor Degache is also internationally recognized in the field of muscular isokinetic evaluations.

Prof. Dr. Reymond Clavel
Professor Emeritus EPFL

Reymond obtained his degree in mechanical engineering and his PhD degree in parallel robotics at EPFL. After nine years of gathered experience in industrial plants (research and development), he was appointed professor at EPFL in 1981. He was consecutively entrusted with the following positions: Department Head, President (dean) of the lecturer's board of micro engineering and, in 1993, Director of the Laboratory of robotics’ systems (LSRO). His research topics focused on high speed and high precision robotics, medical robotics’ applications, surgical instrumentation and precision mechanisms. Reymond is at the origin of 30 patents.

Valentin Christian Splett
Strategy and Sales Advisor

Valentin has an M.A. in economics from University of Zurich (summa cum laude). He built up the North American operations of a Swiss biotech / pharma SME in Boston from 2009 to 2014, and then became MBI-partner of a ETHZ Medical Device Spin-Off, where he built up and led the commercial operations. After the successful exit of the company in 2016, he was responsible for post-merger-integration and global sales strategy at the acquiring company. Since April 2018, building on his experience in strategy for medical devices and healthcare-related ventures, Valentin has been working with a number of SMEs and startups in advisory/board/external positions.

Prof. Dr. Stéphane Gobron
HE-ARC Professor

Stéphane is Professor at the University of Applied Sciences HE-Arc, where he leads the Graphics Team. His research mainly focuses on Serious Games for Health and geometric modeling applied to the field of radiotherapy. He recently wrote a book on WebGL, i.e. real time computer graphics for Internet. Concerning the LHS, Stéphane's team currently focuses on the Serious Games developments.

Balvinder Purewal
Business Development Advisor

Balvinder has more than 25 years of experience as an Information Technology expert with leading Swiss Luxury Goods Brands. Multilingual with work experience at international and national level, he has also helped a Swiss Family Office for it’s IT outsourcing project for developing automated trading systems on World Stock Markets. He is very passionate about Swiss innovations and has helped in fund raising for Top 100 – Best Swiss Startups. Balvinder is advising us for Business Development.

Partners

Lambda Health System can count on the support of different institutions.

Medical partners

CHUV

The Lausanne University hospital and particularly its service of neurorehabilitation is a key partner for the medical input since the early days of LHS. The CHUV is currently the sponsor of the first clinical trials of the Lambda robot. Practicians of the service of neurorehabilitation are co-investigator of this study.

HESAV

The University of Health Sciences of Lausanne and some of its physiotherapists have collaborated during the Lambda robot development to ensure usability for the therapist and usefulness for the patient. A physiotherapist of the HESAV is also co-investigator in the Lambda robot first clinical trials.

Swiss Rehabilitation

Swiss Rehabilitation is an organisation specialised in neurorehabilitation treatments at home. A young and dynamic team of physiotherapists providing healthcare in multiple regions of the Vaud district, supervised by Nicolas Perret, team member of Lambda Health System.

Institution de Lavigny

Lavigny is an institution based on a few different sites in canton de Vaud. Their hospital departement is specialized and well recognised in Europe in neurorehabilitation and epileptology. Their mission is to help patients from sub-acute to ambulatory care, maintaining the best possible quality of life. The institution was the first adopter of the tecnology and is a really important partner for the development of new functionnalities and therapies.

Villa Beretta

Villa Beretta and the Dr. Franco Molteni and his team are early adopters of the Lambda device and gather cinical data on the benefits of its therapies.

Academic partners

HE-ARC

The University of Applied Sciences of Neuchatel, is our close partner for all computer graphics challenges, including Serious Games and Virtual Reality using head-mounted display. The current Serious Game platform is the result of more than 3 years of their work and a few Bachelor and Master Thesis – see the Graphics Team, "Groupe de Compétence Imagerie"

HEIG-VD

LHS is a spin-off of the University of applied Sciences of Yverdon-les-Bains. Since the early days, and for the future, it is our privileged partner for R&D. A lot of bachelor or master thesis linked to LHS have been done in the field of engineering or marketing and finances.

Hepia

Located in Geneva, the Robotics Laboratory of hepia is our partner for the development of all robot motion control algorithms. Several bachelor and master thesis have been achieved and are currently in progress on this topic.

HEE

This transversal group is composed of 32 HEIG-VD's co-worker specialized in the medtech industry. It was at the heart of the Lambda robot development.

Support Organizations

Innosuisse

The Comission for Technology and Innovation provides a really important support for LHS in different ways. The CTI-Entrepreneurship Courses "Venture Challenge" and "Business Creation" were highlights in our progression. Furthermore, our start-up is currently in the phase 2 of the CTI-Start-up Coaching process.

Venture Kick!

Turning scientific innovation into entrepreneurial activity and job creation is the basis of societal and economical prosperity. In the very early stages, startups bear very high risk that are neither carried by public money nor by private investors. That's why Venture Kick was created to support seed stage startups, like our!

GENILEM

GENILEM is a non-profit organization founded in 1995. Its mission is to support the creation of innovative companies in all areas. Constituted as a network, it works with other independent antennas in the German et French-speaking parts of Switzerland. LHS has the chance to benefit from a coaching of 3 years given by GENILEM experts.

Innovaud

Innovaud provides various support options for companies, from start-ups and SMEs to giant multinationals. It gives us access to advice on business start and a good address book. The Innovaud Connect are also some useful events.

FIT

FIT aims to support high technology and innovative projects by providing appropriate financial assistance. For LHS, the help is a participation on the HEIG-VD Start-up grant, for the best entrepreneurial project of the year presented by a student or employee of the school.