Björn Strehl is a German entrepreneur, certified orthopedic and rehabilitation technician with over 30 years of professional experience, and founder and Managing Director of STREHL GmbH & Co. KG in Bremervörde, Lower Saxony. The company specializes in pediatric rehabilitation and orthopedic technology, developing individualized seat, walking, and standing orthoses for children with severe and multiple disabilities. Originally founded in 1995 as the “Sanitätshaus Bederkesa” together with Frank Kettlitz, the company was later renamed STREHL and grew into a workshop combining traditional craftsmanship with advanced digital fabrication, including a 7-axis milling robot (“Goliath”), CAD-CNC systems, and matrix measurement methods.
Strehl is best known for pioneering the use of Airbus carbon-composite materials in pediatric orthoses and for co-developing the “Motion-Base” movement platform for rehabilitation, in cooperation with osthaus & beckert GmbH and the Transferzentrum Elbe-Weser. For these innovations, the company received the Innovationspreis Niedersachsen 2018 in the “Cooperation” category and the Niedersächsischer Wirtschaftspreis für Mittelstand und Handwerk (2019, for “Gewinnung von Fachkräften”). In 2019, Strehl personally presented the carbon orthoses and Motion-Base to then-Chancellor Angela Merkel at the Internationale Handwerksmesse in Munich. His motivation is personal: as a child, he faced the threat of losing his foot after an operation, which led him into the field.