Bringing Tech to Knee Rehab

Vidhi Gondalia (MSIT ‘24) was doing jumping jacks at the gym when she landed on an uneven surface and fractured her ankle. 

The physical therapy process was grueling for Gondalia, who questioned some of her exercises as she worried about reinjury.  

"There were a lot of blind spots when exercising on my own," she said. "I never felt fully confident that Iwas doing the movements correctly, which made recovery more stressful than it needed to be." 

Now Gondalia is trying to reduce those blind spots for people recovering from knee injuries.  

Gondalia is a graduate of Northwestern Engineering’s Master of Science in Information Technology (MSIT) program and co-founder of CuraFitt, a company building an AI-driven, screen-free wearable device for knee rehabilitation. The device uses sensors and machine learning to track exercise movements, give real-time feedback, and provide physical therapists with objective data on progress.  

The goal is to make rehab more accurate and engaging, reducing the risk of re-injury, and improving outcomes for both patients and clinicians.  

“Recovering from my injury made me realize how difficult it is to follow physical therapy correctly at home just from printed instructions or YouTube videos,” she said. “I wanted to create a solution that bridges the gap between clinic and home, a way for patients to know that even at home they have a helping hand that will let them know if they are doing exercises with the wrong posture.”  

The device is targeted to be both a medical aid and a convenience for those who have suffered an injury. Instead of frequent trips to a physical therapist’s office, someone recovering from a knee injury can do the work at home while receiving real-time feedback. The device also sends information to the physical therapist, who can more easily chart progress.  

The strength of the device, Gondalia said, is that it takes the guesswork out of home exercises and improves people’s adherence to their physical therapy routine, all while making sure a qualified medical professional is in the loop.   

“Physicians or therapists can look at the data and really know details of the PT sessions patients did at home,” Gondalia said. “These are things that are difficult to know from a weekly one-hour session at the clinic. It’s information that can be used to proactively change the course of treatment and get the patient where they want to be.”   

Gondalia attributes her innovation with CuraFitt to her time in the MSIT program. She said all it took was one sentence on the MSIT website – that the program bridged the gap between business and technology – to sell her on applying.   

“That really spoke to me. I knew that as an engineer I needed to learn about decision-making and, most importantly, the mindset of decision-makers,” she said. “The blend of technical depth and management skills allowed me to think like both an engineer and a leader.”  

Now, Gondalia puts her MSIT skills into practice at CuraFitt. She said MSIT’s emphasis on balancing innovation with the practical realities of running a business and ensuring profitability has helped guide her role as company founder.   

She also leans on the program’s lessons about the importance of being able to communicate technical ideas in clear and understandable ways to varying audiences. This has helped her sell the benefits of CuraFitt to diverse stakeholders.  

It also helped earn CuraFitt a spot in the Chicago-based 2025 mHUB mPOWER Cohort, a group of 18 early-stage startups participating in a six-month program designed to accelerate their growth by giving their leaders access to hands-on support and mentorship.  

“MSIT helped me become a more strategic thinker and a more confident decision-maker. ,” Gondalia said. “The MSIT family taught me how to implement technology, budget for it, do it right, and explain it to the world.”