At the beginning of her decades-long career in occupational and hand therapy, while studying at the Government Medical College in Nagbur, India in the ’90s, Saba Kamal recalls having used aluminum sheets to fabricate hand braces. Eventually, thermoplastic braces replaced the sharper and sometimes uncomfortable aluminum.
Just as those thermoplastics changed the game for hand therapists back then, Kamal now aims to push the field further through her startup, Kinove Lab, which produces innovative devices designed to treat hand pain.
Kamal has over 30 years of experience in hand therapy, during which she has served as the president of the Hand Therapy Association of California (HTA-CA) and run her own personal practice, Hands-On-Care. Kamal also had her own personal experience in the space following the birth of her twins, suffering from extreme pain that impacted her work.
“After my twins were born, my thumb would actually pop out of the socket,” Kamal said. “It was that bad. I couldn’t even pull like a little sheet because it was so painful. I was in excruciating agony, and the solutions that were offered to me, I know how they work. They don’t work, so I wanted to do something that was different, and I wanted to design something else rather than just wear a brace passively. I wanted something more than that. So that’s how I came up with the ThumbCore device.”
Kamal’s professional experience and her own pain from thumb carpometacarpal joint osteoarthritis led her to start experimenting and designing the devices that would become the foundation of Kinove Lab.
The Kinove Lab solutions
Kinove Lab offers four different products: ThumbCore, a thumb spica brace, a carpal fanning brace and a wrist instability brace, all of which are at different points in the patenting process. The devices are designed not only to relieve hand pain, but to provide strengthening physical therapy that will help with prevention and recovery.
Kamal said that in hand therapy, a lot of patients report that they continue to feel pain after treatment due to inconsistency in doing exercises; she hopes that her devices can ease that friction and help patients follow through on adhering to their treatment plans for the best outcomes.
Through her years serving as the president of the HTA-CA, Kamal has created connections with thousands of hand therapists throughout the United States, United Kingdom and Europe. Kamal plans to use these connections to put her products in practices and clinics across the U.S., estimating a total addressable market of 650 to 750 million users.
In the future, the plan is to incorporate remote therapy monitoring into the devices (which will also position them to be covered under insurance). A smart companion app will pair with devices to enable users to track and share their exercises—helping them measure streaks, progress, workout time, and more in full visibility of a hand therapist.
As Kamal puts it on the startup’s website the Kinove OS provides “adherence you can actually see.”
Building Kinove Lab
Kamal started Kinove Lab in North Carolina while working with a partner from the state, whom she eventually parted ways with. However, Kamal had fallen in love with the startup ecosystem in the Triangle area and decided to keep operations in place. Kamal recently participated in the Center for Entrepreneurial Development’s GRO Incubator program and pitched Kinove Lab to the community during the spring Demo Day.
Up to this point, Kinove Lab has been self-funded; as of this writing, Kamal is waiting to hear back concerning a grant from the Hand Therapy Foundation that will help propel the business forward. Kinove Lab is looking for investors for its pilot study and commercialization, and Kamal is on the lookout for partners who can work with her through the manufacturing and business side of the startup.
QUICK BITS
Startup: Kinove Lab
Founder: Saba Kamal
Founded: 2026
Team size: 3
Location: RTP
Website: kinovelab.com
Funding: Bootstrapped
As a hand therapist herself, Kamal said that she is constantly striving for ways to improve care for her patients.
“You can see a patient walking in depressed, who can’t even brush their teeth, eat—forget it!” Kamal reflected with a laugh. “I’ve had patients who joke about it. It’s like, you know, where both the hands are in a cast, and you feel like the little babies: ‘Give me food!’ like somebody else is feeding them.
“And then they’re able to do things for themselves, and the little things become joyous. Like, ‘Oh, I was able to brush my teeth.’ We take it for granted, and all of that comes back [following successful therapy], and you can actually see that.”
