BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jul 28, 2026--
REEV announced today that it has initiated a pivotal clinical study of DREEVEN, the company's intelligent robotic knee-ankle-foot orthosis designed to restore mobility and independence for stroke survivors with chronic gait impairment. Stroke is among the leading causes of long-term disability in the United States. According to the American Stroke Association, more than 80% of stroke survivors experience gait impairment. Most experience some gait improvement during the first two months of recovery, but community ambulation remains compromised. Gait ability is an essential predictor of functional independence, quality of life, and long-term survival after stroke.
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The study will evaluate how DREEVEN supports patient mobility and performance during functional activities, including walking on both flat and uneven surfaces, navigating stairs, and completing sit-to-stand transfers. In addition to in-clinic sessions, the study incorporates home monitoring, enabling evaluation of DREEVEN's performance and safety during real-world daily activities. Data will be collected as participants move through their lives, not just in the clinic.
Lou Awad, PT, DPT, PhD, director of Boston University's Neuromotor Recovery Laboratory, is the study's Principal Investigator. Encompass Health of Braintree, MA, and Whittier Rehabilitation Hospital of Bradford, MA, are participating as clinical sites. These partners bring deep expertise in stroke rehabilitation and a shared understanding of meaningful recovery. This study marks a critical milestone in REEV's journey toward FDA clearance and commercial launch.
"The clinicians in these facilities work with stroke survivors every day – they understand the gap between what patients can do today and what they need to do to live independently,” said Amaury Ciurana, CEO of REEV. “These partners are helping us generate clinical evidence while also building the pathway to real-world patient access once DREEVEN receives FDA clearance."
Dr. Brigid Dwyer, MD notes, "One of the most valuable aspects of this study is its incorporation of home monitoring alongside in-clinic sessions. Evaluating device performance in real-world settings gives us a more complete picture of how DREEVEN may support patients in their daily lives."
This study builds on REEV's established clinical foundation. SENSE, the company's FDA-registered, HIPAA-compliant gait analysis system, is already in use at rehabilitation centers across the country. It gives clinicians objective, real-time insight into each patient's unique gait pattern. SENSE data is designed to customize DREEVEN’s motor control – calibrating the precise level of assistance each patient needs during their daily activities.
REEV is expanding access to effective mobility solutions for stroke survivors living with chronic gait impairments through this pivotal study and the Neuro-Integration Program. This clinical collaboration with leading stroke centers ensures that when DREEVEN is cleared, the infrastructure to support patients will already be in place.
Rehabilitation centers interested in learning about DREEVEN's pivotal study or REEV's Neuro-Integration Program are encouraged to contact megan.hoogmoed@reev.care.
DREEVEN is an investigational device that has not been cleared for commercial sale in the United States.
About REEV
REEV is a medical technology company with offices in Toulouse, France, and Boston, Massachusetts. Its mission is to reinvent mobility care for millions of people facing physical limitations due to neurological conditions, aging, or orthopedic disorders through intelligent, lightweight wearable robotics. REEV’s technology portfolio includes REEV SENSE, a precise gait analysis system, and DREEVEN, a prescription-based, intelligent robotic knee-ankle-foot orthosis, currently in clinical trials. Connect with REEV on LinkedIn.
The first smart, patient-centric, motorized orthosis for everyday life after stroke.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Florida is set to become the first state in nearly a decade to carry out two executions in a single day, planning lethal injections Tuesday for an ex-police officer convicted of a young girl's murder and an octogenarian who would be the second-oldest inmate put to death in modern U.S. history.
The planned injections come 18 months after Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis began stepping up executions at a rate unseen in modern times in Florida. DeSantis hasn't said why he scheduled two executions six hours apart, and Florida prison officials haven't said whether the timing creates any logistical challenges for staff.
James Aren Duckett, 68, is scheduled to die by lethal injection at noon at Florida State Prison near Starke, followed later that day by 80-year-old Dominick Anthony Occhicone, who also would become the oldest prisoner executed in Florida's modern history.
Duckett was convicted of raping and drowning an 11-year-old girl while working as a police officer in a small central Florida city in 1987, and Occhicone was convicted of the 1986 killings of his ex-girlfriend’s parents.
Duckett and Occhicone would become Florida’s 11th and 12th inmates to be executed this year if their sentences are carried out.
The Florida Supreme Court denied appeals for both men last week. Duckett’s attorneys had asked for another stay, claiming that Duckett is innocent and that the state’s handling of the DNA evidence is the reason for the inconclusive results. Occhicone’s attorneys argued that several age-related ailments, including kidney and prostate problems, could make his execution especially painful, constituting cruel and unusual punishment.
Both men still had appeals pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.
DeSantis, who leaves office in January, oversaw a record 19 executions in 2025, more in a single year than any other Florida governor since the death penalty was reinstated in the U.S. in 1976. The previous high was eight executions set in 2014.
If Tuesday’s executions proceed, that would bring the total for DeSantis’ final two years in office up to 31 overall, compared to just nine executions during the first six years of his administration. With another execution already set for August, 2026 could also be a record-breaking year.
DeSantis initially signed a death warrant for Duckett in February, setting a March 31 execution date. But the Florida Supreme Court issued a stay just days ahead of that date to allow for DNA testing of old evidence that couldn’t be performed at the time of the original trial because of technological limitations. The results came back inconclusive, meaning they did not exonerate Duckett or definitively connect him to the crime. Judges have allowed the jury verdict to stand.
When Occhicone's death warrant was signed late last month, his was the only execution scheduled for Tuesday. But after the Florida Supreme Court removed Duckett's stay on July 8, DeSantis signed a new death warrant soon after and added Duckett to Occhicone’s execution date, which hadn't been done in Florida in more than 60 years. Florida Department of Corrections records show multiple executions on a single day were more common in the past, with the last being on May 12, 1964.
Nationwide, it's not uncommon for two different states to hold executions on the same date, but it's less common for a single state to perform two. Before Florida, the most recent U.S. state to execute two inmates on the same day was Arkansas in April 2017. And Texas executed two convicted killers on the same day in 2000, the year it put to death 40 prisoners.
Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty has urged DeSantis to halt both executions.
“July 28 represents an unprecedented escalation of Florida’s use of the death penalty,” the group’s executive director, Grace Hanna, said in a statement. “These are two profoundly different cases, but they point to the same troubling reality: Florida continues to expand the use of capital punishment, despite mounting evidence that it is not what Floridians want.”
The governor's office has rarely commented on executions over the past 18 months. DeSantis has previously said his goal is to bring justice to victims’ families who have waited decades for death sentences to be carried out.
“Some of these crimes were committed in the ’80s,” the governor said at a November 2025 news conference. “Justice delayed is justice denied. I felt I owed it to them to make sure this ran very smoothly. If I honestly thought someone was innocent, I would not pull the trigger.”
Occhicone would become Florida's oldest inmate to be executed, just weeks after two 74-year-old men briefly held that spot, the second man just a week older than the first at his time of death. Recent executions have highlighted the nation's aging death-row population and renewed questions about the humanity of administering capital punishment to inmates who might die soon from natural causes.
Occhicone also would become the second-oldest prisoner known to be executed in modern U.S. history after 83-year-old Walter Moody Jr. in Alabama in 2018. Moody was condemned for a wave of mail bombs in 1989 that killed a federal judge and wounded a Black civil rights attorney.
Florida executions are all by injection of a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart, according to the Department of Corrections.
FILE - Clouds hover over the entrance of the Florida State Prison in Starke, Fla., Aug. 3, 2023. (AP Photo/Curt Anderson, file)
