About Motion Lab Systems, Inc.

Corporate History

Motion Lab Systems Inc., is wholly owned and controlled by Edmund Cramp and Carolyn Maher who have extensive experience with Clinical and Motion Analysis laboratories throughout the United States. We are independent and have no connection or ownership affiliation with any Motion Capture system supplier.

Motion Lab Systems has a reputation for supplying reliable, first class products to gait labs throughout the world. We have over twenty two years of experience in the design, configuration and installation of Gait and Motion Analysis Laboratories and can provide consultation and design assistance to anyone planning a Gait or Motion Laboratory.

1987

Motion Lab Systems was started in 1987, in Tampa, Florida by Edmund Cramp, who was also the President of Oxford Metrics, Inc at that time. The aim was simple - build a better EMG system - the need was obvious as Oxford Metrics Inc was selling a third-party telemetry EMG system at that time which was unreliable and produced poor quality data. At that time the only clinical EMG systems available in the United States were Transkinetics (a radio-telemetry system) and Therapeutics Unlimited - a hardwired system that required the subject to drag a thick cable containing a individual wires for each muscle being recorded. The radio-telemetry systems were convenient but expensive and had reliability and data quality problems, while the cabled systems were less expensive, but inconvenient to use and didn't produce data of a much higher quality than the radio-telemetry systems.

The introduction of the MA100 EMG system in 1987, with its lightweight cable and high quality data, set a new price and performance landmark that revolutionized the study of EMG in the Gait Lab by combining the easy of telemetry with the affordability of a cabled system. The introduction of the MA100 was the first multi channel EMG system that made use of the advanced signal multiplexing techniques that were to be subsequently adopted by other companies entering the field. Although the methods created by Motion Lab Systems enabling the MA100 to transmit the EMG data from subject to computer were determined to be patentable we declined to patent the methods as the company philosophy is to advance by innovation.

1988-1990

With the success of the first MA100 systems, Motion Lab Systems expanded to build the first, commercially available wand marker sets for Clinical Gait Analysis, the Knee Alignment Device, and introduced our first software application - a DOS-based EMG Analysis program based on techniques developed at Helen Hayes Hospital and Newington Children's Hospital.

In 1992 we moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana and started to expand - Carolyn Maher joined the company bringing years of commercial and financial experience to Motion Lab Systems. With over 100 MA100 systems in the field throughout the world we introduced the MA200 system and started efforts to develop a range of EMG preamplifiers that would be reliable and easy to use. At this time, the only commercial EMG preamplifiers available were made by IOmed (aka Motion Control) of Salt Lake CIty, UT.

1991-1997

With the increasing success of Motion Lab systems products, 1997 marked the end of our association with Oxford Metrics (now known as Vicon) and the start of our complete independence with our ten year anniversary. Sameer Kolangaradath joined Motion Lab Systems as a full time programmer with several years of experience writing clinical and research software in the gait environment. Now, completely independent, we were free to develop software applications that we viewed as important to the gait environment. We expanded our range of software programs with the introduction of a graphical C3D file editor and additional EMG Analysis software applications.

1998-2001

The 1998-2001 period marked the introduction of a number of new software applications and three new EMG systems together with a range of EMG preamplifiers for both surface and fine-wire recordings that featured both a rugged design and a signal bandwidth covering the full EMG signal range.

The introduction of the MA300 system - three systems supporting six, ten and sixteen EMG channels presented an affordable upgrade path to the gait lab community for the first time. In addition we started to offer additional products from other vendors where they complement our range of products.

2002-2007

Motion Lab Systems continued to expand, adding new sales staff and continuing to add new features and products. This period culminated with the MA300 product range completing CE and Underwriters Laboratories (UL) certifications. By the end of 2001 Motion Lab systems had outgrown its original offices and in January 2002 we moved to a new building with 2500 square feet of office space together with additional storage and display areas. In 2005 we completed development to upgrade the MA300 system to offer a technically superior back-pack interface with both LEMO and BINDER connection options, an internal calibration source and individual LED indicators. This enabled all existing MA300 users to stay at the forefront of both Clinical and EMG Research fields without purchasing a new system. Towards the end of the year Hurricane Katrina struck our state closing Motion Lab Systems for only one day after which we reopened, providing humanitarian support to evacuees from New Orleans.

2008-2009

Being based in Louisiana Motion Lab Systems has weathered hurricanes and economic downturns all while continuing to develop new products. As always we strive to help those in our industry, as proven with the introduction of our two latest EMG systems. Designed to offer our customers continued reliability and maximum affordability without sacrificing data integrity. With some of our original MA100 EMG systems still working day to day in the field our track record speaks for itself.

The Future...

We haven’t stopped - in fact just the opposite. Some of our customers have asked when we would produce a telemetry version of our systems. Our answer was simple... "when we can make one that works as well as our cable units". Watch for this addition to our product line coming 2009-2010.