SWORD Health, the creator of the AI-powered digital physiotherapist SWORD Phoenix, has closed a USD4.6 million seed funding round. The investment, provided by Green Innovations and Vesalius Biocapital III and other investors from Europe and the US will be used to accelerate the development of new digital therapies and drive SWORD Health’s global growth.
SWORD Health is a technology platform pioneering a new approach to physical rehabilitation. Using a combination of high-precision motion tracking sensors and the latest advances in AI, SWORD Health’s core product, SWORD Phoenix, offers patients interactive physical rehabilitation exercises from the comfort of their own home, supervised by remote physiotherapists.
SWORD Phoenix dramatically lowers the cost of physiotherapy for healthcare providers, while providing clinical teams and healthcare providers with access to in-depth information on patient performance and increased operational efficiency. Because SWORD Phoenix patients are able to recover from the comfort of their own homes, they show higher levels of engagement in their physical therapies. SWORD Health’s research shows that 93 per cent of patients demonstrated improvement in the quality of their motor tasks using the platform, and SWORD Health technology is currently being used by healthcare professionals in the USA, Canada, Australia, Norway and Portugal.
Virgílio Bento, founder and CEO of SWORD Health, says: “Demand for physical rehabilitation therapy is rising around the world, yet for many people the therapy they need is out of reach. Our mission is to democratise access to effective physical rehabilitation therapy, and deliver increased operational efficiency to national health services, healthcare providers and insurance companies through our platform.
“We have spent the last three years developing and refining the core AI technology that powers our Phoenix digital physiotherapist, and demonstrating efficacy through extensive clinical trials. We are excited to embark on our next phase of growth, where we will focus on global market expansion, the development of new digital therapies and further clinical trials.”
Guy Geldhof, partner at Vesalius Biocapital, says: “Physical rehabilitation faces a number of significant challenges. As an industry, it is highly dependent on a small number of specialists, which leads to high costs for patients as well as communication and organisational difficulties for service providers. SWORD Health has real potential to revolutionise physical rehabilitation for the better, and we are delighted to be supporting Virgílio and his highly talented team on their next phase of growth.”
