Jospeh Smith, CEO of Reflexion Health pitches Vera at Converge2Xcelerate Conference (Boston, MA)

HIGHLIGHTS

• Current physical therapy programs can’t meet the needs of the aging population
• Vera tracks patients and movements in a home setting using telehealth
• Vera provides real-time feedback, documenting, reporting and prompting

FULL COVERAGE

• Watch complete coverage of the Converge2Xcelerate Conference

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPTS: Joseph Smith, CEO of Reflexion Health

Joseph Smith – CEO, Reflexion Health: 00:00

It’s a pleasure to be here for Refelxion Health. We’re a virtual physical therapy company. Next slide. So as physical therapies currently configured, it’s inefficient in meeting the needs of a growing senior population. It’s expensive and it’s inconvenient for those who seek it. Next slide. We’re focused on the parts of physical therapy, where the market is and where the money is, and that’s hips and knees, typically after hip and knee replacement, oftentimes before. Back pain, which affects eight out of 10 Americans and shoulder, which either by replacement or by procedure represents another 350,000. So together, that’s about a hundred billion dollars of spend in the US next slide. So talk about the team for a second. So I’m happy and proud to lead about 50 engineers and clinicians together with a growing sales organization who’ve already been locally and internationally recognized. My CTOs from a PhD from Cal Tech, who just finished his stint with a medical robotics company and my chief clinical officer is a dual boarded physical therapist who, until the relations with Chinese chilled.

Joseph Smith – CEO, Reflexion Health: 01:14

He was asked to train the Beijing PT staff for the Chinese Olympic team. Next slide. What we’ve done is we’ve taken advantage of low cost 3D imaging technology together with image analysis, post detection, skeletal reconstruction to be able to track patients in their movement, in the safety and comfort of their own home and run that up against an expert system so that we can in real time give patients real time feedback about what they’re doing and whether they’re meeting the clinicians prescription for what they should be doing, document that educate coach record and mostly prompt patients to be adherent to the specifics of their recommended program, all in the safety and comfort of their own home. Next slide. When we marry that to an engaging avatar, which we’ve called Vera for a virtual exercise rehabilitation assistant. We find that we can expose patients to the clinical expertise that they would otherwise get in face to face visits, but allow them to do that wherever they are, whenever they want. While we’re clearly documenting exactly what they’re doing against their prescription. We’ve also enabled a real time telemedicine link to a battery of physical therapists who can review not only their complaints and have a discussion with them, but also review the archives real time data that the patients conducted while they were on their own next line.

Joseph Smith – CEO, Reflexion Health: 02:53

So, the link is to telemedicine. It’s not just breaking the barriers of distance, which is routine in telemedicine where you allow people independent of space to be able to access medical care by building an artificially intelligent system that keeps their eye on the patient in three dimensions. We’re able to break the tyranny of time as well, so that patients are free to do this whenever they like and still have the expert guidance that’s stored inside the device and the algorithms within it. Next slide. So how do we assure market access? We try very hard to meet every patient and every provider and every payer where they are, which means we’ve done comprehensive use testing with homeless seniors in San Diego to make sure that the technology does not pose a burden. We manage the technology with sufficient sophistication so that no one is confronted with a technology challenge.

Joseph Smith – CEO, Reflexion Health: 03:47

We provide this not only as a least technology service but also as a tech enabled full professional service. And then finally we contract with payers either on an episode based or at risk with performance-based criteria. And that way we can address the patients, the practices, the integrated health systems, the employers and the health plans, all where they are. One minute, let’s go next slide. And so why should we be paid? It’s because we deliver proven value. We’ve conducted a randomized controlled trial, arm’s length by Duke clinical research Institute, 300 patients, randomized head to head to either inpatient in person face to face physical therapy or virtual only physical therapy. Next slide. In that slide we, this was not a cherry pick version. We have people with BMI’s up to 60. The average age is 66. And these are folks who would normally be seeking face to face care. Next slide. The end result is that in addition to saving about $3,000 per patient in healthcare costs, we also deliver clinical outcomes, which are the same as if not better than a face to face care and something that patients love. They view this as a gift, not a takeaway. Last slide. And how do we do it? It’s by decreasing re-admissions, decreasing PT visits, home health visits, urgent care visits, and skilled nursing facilities. Thank you very much.