Health app start-up raises $10m

The investment will be used for Kaia’s US rollout, including a new office in New York City, and fund further clinical studies.

Kaia’s back pain app has been adopted by over 250,000 individuals as well as organisations across Europe and the US.

This includes some of Europe’s biggest health insurance companies, such as BARMER, Germany’s largest, which offers the service free to members.

The app offers a daily plan featuring physical execrisew, relaxation technques and medical educational content,

Kaia creates home-based, affordable and clinically-validated alternative to painkillers, delivered through a smartphone.

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.

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  the condition is estimated to affect 100m 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 US to epidemic levels.

Reducing the need to prescribe painkillers and the number of MSK interventions isn’t just beneficial  for patients, but it will also release considerable resources for healthcare institutions to use elsewhere.

“Over the last twelve months, we’ve demonstrated a universal, unmet need for affordable and accessible digital therapy products, such as our world’s first computer vision-powered back pain app,” says Kaia CEO Konstantin Mehl, “these improve treatment paths for patients and reduce costs for payers in healthcare around the globe.”