CIONIC’s flagship product, the Neural Sleeve, is an FDA- cleared wearable garment controlled by a mobile app, allowing users to customize and manage their mobility treatment, gain insight into their progress, and share data with their healthcare team. The Neural Sleeve tracks the connection between neuromuscular signaling and movement of the body, and then uses the information to inject small currents into the muscle body to create muscle activations, which replace what happens in the motor cortex. CIONIC recently got FDA clearance to use the Neural sleeve for most upper motor neuron conditions (cerebral palsy, post-stroke, multiple sclerosis, and spinal cord injury), and is now in Series A rounds.

Although originated in San Francisco, CIONIC has significant staff in and around the Cleveland Clinic, which is how Robinson got acquainted with the JobsOhio team. Having joined the JobsOhio portfolio recently, Robison remarks that the immediate benefits of working with JobsOhio come from the crucial connections the fund has facilitated between CIONIC and other healthcare entities within Ohio. Ohio’s unique concentration of clinical and industrial healthcare opportunities in places like Cincinnati Children’s and the Cleveland Clinic differentiate it from the tech-saturated networks on the coasts—JobsOhio Ventures’ deep knowledge of and relationship to these Ohioan entities have given the Silicon Valley-based startup a leg-up in the state and nationwide healthcare ecosystems.

They’re very fast, compared to other institutional investors. They did their diligence, but they did it swiftly. They brought in the right people.

Robison worked with JobsOhio while rounding out Series A funding. “Very early on, the JobsOhio team communicated their own value, and informed us about what they could bring to the business, both in terms of that connection to the clinical ecosystem within Ohio as well as with the government infrastructure,” he says. Those pivotal early-stage connections in the places where it matters have allowed CIONIC to garner attention across coasts, and empowers Robison to continue to marry continuous diagnostics and machine intelligence with real-time, practical bodily augmentation, eradicating mobility issues and pain for his daughter and others.