From L to R: Medical Alley Association CEO Shaye Mandle, MedCity News Editor in Chief Arundhati Parmar and Moving Analytics CEO Harsh Vathsangam
Every year, millions of people suffer from a cardiac health event, and even though rehabilitation programs have been shown to double a patient’s chances of living another five years, they suffer from high attrition and low participation rates.
Moving Analytics is a startup trying to address socio-economic factors that make it difficult to complete rehab in a traditional brick-and-mortar facility through a tech-enabled home rehab system.
The Funding Model for Cancer Innovation is Broken — We Can Fix It
Closing cancer health equity gaps require medical breakthroughs made possible by new funding approaches.
“The sorry fact is that only 15 percent of patients today participate in rehab because to do so they would have to visit a hospital 36 times,” Moving Analytics CEO Harsh Vathsangam said.
“There are two implications for this, one is that even with reimbursements hospitals lose money on rehab and these patients are those that represent the highest rates of readmission.”
The company has developed Movn, a digital cardiac rehab and secondary prevention program that they claim is able to triple participation rates at one-fifth the cost of the the existing standard of care.
The Los Angeles, California-based company won the MedCity INVEST Twin Cities Pitch Perfect competition earlier this month and in a phone interview Vathsangam expanded on the origins of the company and where it hopes to go in the future.
Market Trends to Watch for Health Systems and Their Specialty Pharmacies
The future looks bright for the integrated specialty pharmacy model – for health systems, providers, and most importantly, for patients.
The startup’s technology has its roots in research conducted at the Stanford University School of Medicine that developed a series of treatment plans and algorithms laying how best to manage patients at home with different cardiac symptoms.
Where Moving Analytics comes in is by updating that largely paper-based system with modern and adaptive technology including a mobile application, blood pressure cuff and a wireless scale.
“What we’ve done since is create a 2.0 version, with a tech platform meant to make delivery of the program seamless,” Vathsangam said.
That digital health program includes five major segments: exercise, diet adjustment, medication adherence and customization, stress management an smoking cessation.
“The trick is that for each patient it’s not a standard menu, it changes based on how they feel and how well they stick to their care plan,” Vathsangam said.
For now the company is focused on working with risk-bearing health systems and hospitals looking to lower costs and transition to value based care contracts.
Still, as a small 8-person startup in healthcare, the company has to deal with extended sales cycles that can be difficult to work around. However, Vathsangam said adoption is growing and he hopes to be in 20 hospitals by the end of the year.
Part of the reason the company decided to participate in Pitch Perfect was to create a level of validation with top notch investors that can used to create buzz and momentum ahead of a planned Series A fundraise next year.
“We want to get at least 1 million patients in the U.S. every year through rehab and every decision we make is guided by that North Star metric,” Vathsangam said. “Cardiac rehab is like a lifesaving drug that’s not being used because of issues like costs and distance.”
Picture: Kevin Truong, MedCity News