NEW YORK, April 16, 2019
/PRNewswire/ -- SWORD Health, a tech-enabled physical therapy
provider, has raised $8 million in a
series A investment round led by Khosla Ventures and several other
prominent angel investors. It will allow SWORD to focus on bringing
its technology to more patients' homes and expand its footprint in
the U.S. market.
The investment will bring SWORD Health closer to its ultimate
goal of cutting the costs of Musculoskeletal Disorders (MSDs) in
the U.S. by half. The funding round will also allow the
company to further expand the product's clinical validation
and engineering.
More than 50 percent of Americans struggle with MSDs, requiring
a yearly expenditure of $190 billion,
making it the second biggest cost driver in healthcare. Even though
physical therapy is endorsed by the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention as the best solution to treat of MSDs, current treatment
solutions still include the use of opioids and cumbersome
surgeries.
"We already proved we could make the impossible possible by
developing a new technology many thought unthinkable," said SWORD
Health's founder and CEO Virgilio
Bento. "With this round we want to go from the possible to
the inevitable."
"Musculoskeletal disorders are driving work absenteeism,
fostering opioid consumption and paving the way to otherwise
avoidable surgeries. We're building the next 50 years of the
physical therapy world and with this we're reshaping
musculoskeletal care," added Bento.
SWORD's Digital Therapists bring physical therapy to patients'
homes, making it more convenient and engaging, and SWORD' approach
has already proven to be more effective than traditional physical
therapy (studies here and here). Furthermore, a clinical team of
doctors and physical therapists remotely assesses, validates and
supervises the therapeutic program of each patient.
The founder of Khosla Ventures, Vinod
Khosla, says that "Musculoskeletal care has had very little
innovation in the past 50 years, and yet it is one of the most
expensive areas in healthcare. SWORD can disrupt the physical
therapy landscape with their end-to-end technical approach that
enables exponentially more efficient delivery of care for patients
and payers."
SWORD Health is already working with some of the biggest
self-insured employers and health plans in the U.S. to treat and
prevent MSDs, thereby reducing healthcare costs.
Existing seed investors also participated in the latest funding
round, that follows a seed round of $4.6
million in April 2018. The
company has now raised more than $15
million since its inception in 2015.
About SWORD Health
SWORD Health is a tech-enabled provider of physical therapy,
pairing its AI-powered digital therapists with human clinical teams
to recover patients faster and better. SWORD Health is cutting
Healthcare costs with musculoskeletal disorders by half while
providing patients with more convenient and effective physical
therapy at home.
After his brother was in a car accident, Virgílio Bento, the
company's founder and CEO, identified a gap between the demand for
physical therapy and the ability to deliver it. Following his
Ph.D., Bento decided to address the problem and founded SWORD
Health. The company has offices in San
Francisco, New York and
Porto.
About Khosla Ventures
Khosla Ventures is a venture capitalist firm that provides
venture assistance and strategic advice to entrepreneurs working on
breakthrough technologies. The firm was founded in 2004 by
Vinod Khosla, co-founder of Sun
Microsystems. The firm focuses on transformative technology in
consumer, enterprise, education, advertising, financial services,
semiconductors, health, big data, agriculture/food, sustainable
energy and robotics. Khosla Ventures is headquartered in
Menlo Park, California. For more
information about the firm's activities, please visit
https://www.khoslaventures.com.
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SOURCE SWORD Health