Millions of Americans suffer from chronic conditions that affect the hand each year, such as the 1.5 million people with rheumatoid arthritis and up to 10 million people with carpal tunnel syndrome. This week, Mayo Clinic forged a partnership aimed at improving treatment for these patients.
The health system announced a collaboration with Exer AI, a Denver-based startup focused on improving care for patients with musculoskeletal and movement disorders. Under the partnership, Mayo Clinic will use Exer’s AI platform to diagnose and treat dozens of acute and chronic hand and wrist conditions.
Exer, founded in 2019, trained its proprietary AI engine to understand human motion. Specifically, the company trained its technology to understand a library of important functional assessments, such as total active motion, gait analysis, Kapandji score and fall risk, explained CEO Zaw Thet.
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“The assessments run on a tablet — with the patient standing in front of the camera — and take about 30 seconds. We don’t use sensors, straps or wearables. The measurements are accurate and objective to reduce variance among practitioners, faster than doing it manually and allow us to see ‘more stuff’ than a human can if they perform the same assessment themselves,” he declared.
Exer seeks to improve diagnosis and treatment for musculoskeletal and motion disorders wherever the patient is — whether that be in their provider’s office, their home or via telehealth appointment — Thet pointed out.
He also noted that the company designs its software for clinicians across multiple specialities, including orthopedics, neurology, spine, geriatrics and physical therapy.
“The platform offers our healthcare customers accurate, objective functional assessments that run on common mobile devices without extra hardware or sensors, freeing up time and resources by optimizing patient volume and efficiency across the continuum of care from referral through to recovery,” Thet stated.
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Under the new collaboration, Mayo Clinic will be using Exer’s technology to perform assessments in the clinic, in remote settings and via telehealth visits.
Dr. Steven Moran, a Mayo Clinic surgeon and president of the American Society for the Surgery of Hands, will be working with his team to co-develop and distribute a clinical module for hand assessments inside Exer’s platform, Thet said.
“We’ll develop and validate that module with their team, and we’ll aim to present the outcome findings to the society as a new global standard of care/approved protocol for hand and wrist injuries,” he stated.
Exer is currently serving nine health systems, though Mayo Clinic is the only one that Thet is permitted to name at this time, he said.
In Thet’s view, Exer’s software stands out because it runs exclusively on mobile devices.
“We’re often competing with legacy hardware — big machines that do these measurements, often with sensors, straps or wearables. In health systems, that could be something like a gait analysis lab, or Microsoft Kinect sensor systems,” he explained.
The big difference is that Exer’s platform is “pure software,” like an app in the App Store, Thet declared. He pointed out that this brings the advantages of portability and easy implementation, which makes it easier to conduct rollouts across large health systems.
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