Physitrack platform on mobile devices
In a bid to expand the U.S. market for its remote monitoring tool to boost patient engagement for physical therapy regimens, UK-based Physitrack has partnered with Raintree Systems, a specialist electronic medical record vendor with a focus on EMRs for rehabilitation providers. As part of the agreement, Raintree will offer Physitrack to clients that include independent rehabilitation centers as well as those affiliated with hospital systems and institutions. Most of the patients prescribed Physitrack are recovering from orthopedic surgery or sports-related injuries.
Physitrack’s approach allows physicians to select personalized therapy regimens from various video exercises that can be livestreamed by patients. A telehealth component provides a way for patients and physicians to communicate within the platform. Physicians can also access analysis of patients’ recovery such as expected condition and pathway specific outcomes, expected recovery times for specific conditions, measure and impact of the effect of clinical visits. Analysis is partly gathered from questionnaires given to patients.
Earlier this year, Physitrack inked a deal with mobile EHR vendor drchrono to integrate its physical therapy app into the iOS network for Apple mobile devices, including Apple Watch. Apple served as something of a matchmaker for the two businesses.
CEO and Cofounder Henrik Molin said he had the chance to meet Apple CEO Tim Cook in April. “It’s amazing what Apple did for our business,” Molin remarked. The company has been adding customers in the UK with hospitals there and has also increased its customer base in Europe and New Zealand.
Molin said some of the companies it is often compared with include Montreal-based Physiotec, which has a video exercise platform. For outcomes analysis, Molin said his company is compared with Focus on Therapeutics Outcomes or FOTO, based in Knoxville, Tennessee which developed risk adjustment models for the rehab industry. He contends that digital health companies enlisting software like Microsoft Kinect to make physical therapy feel less like a chore and more like a game will find it tough to scale. Physiotec and FOTO are strategic partners for Raintree.
“If you are going to have an impact on the market, you have to do it with technology that is in everybody’s hands,” Molin said. “You will struggle to do that with niche technology.”
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
Raintree has been building a portfolio of partners to expand its services such as telemedicine technology provider SnapMD, healthcare billing and payment business Navicure, and Jopari, a business that digitizes medical claim transactions, among others.
