*SWORD Health, a tech-enabled physical therapy provider, has raised $8 million in a series A investment round led by Khosla Ventures and several other prominent angel investors. It will allow SWORD to focus on bringing its technology to more patients' homes and expand its footprint in the U.S. market.
The investment will bring SWORD Health closer to its ultimate goal of cutting the costs of Musculoskeletal Disorders (MSDs) in the U.S. by half. The funding round will also allow the company to further expand the product's clinical validation and engineering.
More than 50 percent of Americans struggle with MSDs, requiring a yearly expenditure of $190 billion, making it the second biggest cost driver in healthcare. Even though physical therapy is endorsed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as the best solution to treat of MSDs, current treatment solutions still include the use of opioids and cumbersome surgeries.
"We already proved we could make the impossible possible by developing a new technology many thought unthinkable," said SWORD Health's founder and CEO Virgilio Bento. "With this round we want to go from the possible to the inevitable."
"Musculoskeletal disorders are driving work absenteeism, fostering opioid consumption and paving the way to otherwise avoidable surgeries. We're building the next 50 years of the physical therapy world and with this we're reshaping musculoskeletal care," added Bento.
SWORD's Digital Therapists bring physical therapy to patients' homes, making it more convenient and engaging, and SWORD' approach has already proven to be more effective than traditional physical therapy (studies here and here). Furthermore, a clinical team of doctors and physical therapists remotely assesses, validates and supervises the therapeutic program of each patient.
The founder of Khosla Ventures, Vinod Khosla, says that "Musculoskeletal care has had very little innovation in the past 50 years, and yet it is one of the most expensive areas in healthcare. SWORD can disrupt the physical therapy landscape with their end-to-end technical approach that enables exponentially more efficient delivery of care for patients and payers."
SWORD Health is already working with some of the biggest self-insured employers and health plans in the U.S. to treat and prevent MSDs, thereby reducing healthcare costs.
Existing seed investors also participated in the latest funding round, that follows a seed round of $4.6 million in April 2018. The company has now raised more than $15 million since its inception in 2015.
About SWORD Health
SWORD Health is a tech-enabled provider of physical therapy, pairing its AI-powered digital therapists with human clinical teams to recover patients faster and better. SWORD Health is cutting Healthcare costs with musculoskeletal disorders by half while providing patients with more convenient and effective physical therapy at home.
After his brother was in a car accident, Virgílio Bento, the company's founder and CEO, identified a gap between the demand for physical therapy and the ability to deliver it. Following his Ph.D., Bento decided to address the problem and founded SWORD Health. The company has offices in San Francisco, New York and Porto.
About Khosla Ventures
Khosla Ventures is a venture capitalist firm that provides venture assistance and strategic advice to entrepreneurs working on breakthrough technologies. The firm was founded in 2004 by Vinod Khosla, co-founder of Sun Microsystems. The firm focuses on transformative technology in consumer, enterprise, education, advertising, financial services, semiconductors, health, big data, agriculture/food, sustainable energy and robotics. Khosla Ventures is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. For more information about the firm's activities, please visit https://www.khoslaventures.com.
*SOURCE SWORD Health