Back pain app creator, Kaia Health, today announces it has raised US$10 million in a Series A round led by Balderton Capital. The investment will be used to support Kaia Health’s US rollout, including a new office in New York City, and fund further clinical studies.
Since launching in 2016, Kaia Health has created digital treatments for a range of disorders including back pain. Its Kaia back pain app has been adopted by over 250,000 individuals as well as organisations across Europe and the USA. This includes some of Europe’s biggest health insurance companies, such as BARMER, Germany’s largest, which offers the service free to members.
Kaia Health develops machine learning and computer vision technology and works with medical experts to create a home-based, affordable and clinically-validated alternative to painkillers, delivered through a smartphone. The app offers users a daily plan which features physical exercises, relaxation techniques and medical educational content.
Additionally, therapy can be tailored for each user via a proprietary algorithm which adapts the exercise program to that individual’s input. Patent-pending motion tracking technology monitors and provides real-time audio feedback on patients’ exercise performance. Uniquely, Kaia’s app informs users in natural language if they’re performing exercises correctly, and how to improve them—without requiring any extra hardware.
‘Epidemic levels’
With back pain being one of the leading self-reported medical issues in the world, proven digital alternatives to painkillers cannot come soon enough. In America alone the condition is estimated to affect 100 million people a year and is the number one reason why people are prescribed painkillers. The growing use of opioid-based painkillers has driven reliance on such drugs in the USA to epidemic levels.
Meanwhile, in the UK, 30% of all GP appointments are musculoskeletal-related, costing the NHS at least £5bn a year. Reducing the need to prescribe painkillers and the number of MSK interventions is not just a beneficial outcome for patients, but it will also release resources for healthcare institutions to use elsewhere.
Kaia Health is a member of the Digital Therapeutics Alliance, an association of international manufacturers for digital therapeutic products which works to expand access to high quality, evidence-based digital therapeutics to improve outcomes.
