We’ve all heard of tennis elbow – not life-threatening but a painful condition caused by inflammation of the tendons where the forearm muscles attach to the outer elbow. Known medically as lateral epicondylitis, tennis elbow affects roughly 2% of the population and typically arises in adults between the ages of 35 and 54 after years of repetitive strain.
For decades, the standard treatment has been simple: rest the arm, avoid strain, apply ice and manage the pain with anti-inflammatory medications. Recovery can take between six and twelve months and is largely built around the idea that reducing tension allows the tendon time to heal.
But is reducing tension always the best approach? One innovator at the Health Innovation Hub at UAlberta believes there may be a better path – one that challenges convention and reflects the endurance and perseverance required to bring a new medical technology to market.
The Innovator: Mark Laurensse
Mark Laurensse, CEO of Tennis Elbow R&D Ltd., is the innovator of ArmLock, a medical device designed to help patients with chronic tennis elbow. The brace applies gentle tension to the affected area, an approach intended not only to help repair the tendon but also strengthen it.
As a physiotherapist, Mark became well-acquainted with tennis elbow, seeing it in a wide range of patients. Over time, he he developed a manual stretch to help relieve the pain and discomfort associated with the condition. Mark would hold his patient’s arm in a very particular way for 20 to 30 minutes, putting the affected tendons under sustained tension. Through repeated sessions using this technique, Mark’s patients experienced a noticeable reduction in their tennis elbow symptoms. Initially, this observation stood on its own as a useful therapeutic discovery.
Years later, a second insight brought everything together. After giving his wife a Strassburg Sock to treat her plantar fasciitis, Mark tried an experiment. “One day,” Mark says, “goofing around, I slipped the Strassburg Sock on my arm and that’s when I had that eureka moment.”
From there, the idea evolved quickly. Mark modified the sock into a glove, added a stabilizer bar along the forearm and refined the design into what would become the ArmLock brace – a device capable of replicating that same therapeutic stretch. What he would soon discover, however, was that developing the innovation was the easy part – bringing it to market would prove far more challenging.
The Science Behind ArmLock
The ArmLock brace works by placing the wrist and finger extensors under a controlled, sustained stretch. The patient slips on the sleeve, secures their hand into a closed fist using the hook-and-loop fasteners and adjusts a strap running along the underside of the forearm to apply gentle tension, holding the wrist in a flexed position. Worn for just 30 minutes a day, the device delivers a consistent stimulus that encourages the tendon to adapt, signaling to the brain that the tension is not harmful. This promotes collagen production to strengthen the tissue.
Early Struggles and Perseverance
After completing the ArmLock brace, Mark chose to market the device directly at healthcare trade shows. He spoke with clinicians and experts in the field, demonstrating the brace and explaining how it worked. Though the conversations were many, the response was largely lukewarm. Sales remained small, likely because ArmLock challenged conventional thinking about how tennis elbow should be treated. “We’re approaching the treatment of tennis elbow from a very different mental model,” Mark acknowledges. “We’re desensitizing and stimulating healing but through a method that is counter to what many clinicians believe is the right way.” Due to this challenge, Mark knew a research study was needed.
After connecting with researchers at the University of Alberta, the initial study included ten participants, enough to gather early insights. Determined to strengthen the findings, Mark pursued two additional grants and expanded the participant pool to 19. While the results were promising, the sample size still posed challenges when submitting the research to larger general journals.
Therefore, Mark and his research partners began exploring open-source journals. The study went through the usual rounds of revisions and clarifications, and eventually the study was accepted for publication. In fact, only days after we spoke with Mark about ArmLock and the long road to bringing it to market, he shared the news: the study had officially been published.
You can read the research study here.
The Role of the Health Innovation Hub
It has now been 13 years since his initial concept for ArmLock began to take shape, but Mark’s perseverance has never wavered.
Being part of HIH has also helped along the way, and Mark is quick to recognize the role the ecosystem has played in supporting both his company and his overall innovation journey. “I’ve been given the chance to pitch ArmLock during events and I’ve met many like-minded entrepreneurs along the way.” He speaks enthusiastically about the support available within HIH and across Alberta, describing the province as an environment built on collaboration, forward-thinking and momentum.
He says there is an “overwhelming” sense of support within the ecosystem, particularly when it comes to funding opportunities and potential collaborations. In addition to HIH, he highlights organizations such as Edmonton Unlimited and the Glenrose Foundation as important sources of encouragement and support.
“It’s not an easy endeavor to take a new medical product into the world, but there is a lot of support that’s available in Alberta and Canada to help you do it. I’m so impressed with the amount of support and I’m excited to see how much bigger that support will get over the years.”
What Comes Next for ArmLock
With the publication of his research study now complete, the next question for Mark is simple: what comes next in the ArmLock journey? For Mark, the next phase is about helping clinicians understand that this method of rehabilitation is a viable option, even if it initially feels counterintuitive to those who have long believed that rest alone is the key to healing injured tendons. Mark says he plans to embark on what he calls an “education blitz.”
During this blitz, Mark will connect with clinicians and rehabilitation professionals; most importantly, he will be able to do so with published research backing him. Mark hopes that the combination of research evidence, education and continued support from HIH and Alberta’s innovation ecosystem will help shift perceptions and open the door for broader adoption of ArmLock. Of course, increased sales and clinical acceptance would be welcome outcomes. But for now, his next goal is a simple one: spread the word. Mark even hopes that one day ArmLock will be featured in physiotherapy association newsletters, helping introduce the idea to clinicians around the world.
For an innovation that began with a physiotherapist experimenting with a stretch in his clinic, the journey has been long – but if Mark has learned anything along the way, it’s that persistence and belief in the idea are often what carry an innovation the rest of the distance.