I have two degenerated discs in my lower back and they do hurt. For the past few years I’ve been getting a nerve block procedure that had provided significant relief. My first nerve block lasted for one year. The next for about 8 months and the last one for two or three months. Boo-hoo.
While I still felt good but could tell it wouldn’t last I went to physical therapy at Recesso Physical Therapy in Plaistow where I live. Nice people, very helpful.
Physical therapy either means that patients learn exercises and movements and practice on their own or they don’t. Going there I was all for learning what I could and putting it into practice right away. Starting last May I began twice a week and then after a 6 or so weeks realized that I didn’t need to go twice a week or even once a week since I was religiously doing the exercises.
What I needed was to finish out my schedule for the purpose of having them check my exercise precision and comment. This way I’d put their information to best use and stretch out my last few sessions over the longest period of time getting reasonably good return on investment. And I did.
But doing my PT everyday on my own doesn’t teach me anything new. It doesn’t pressure me to improve by adding more resistance or repetitions. It doesn’t challenge me and there by make me even better.
While doing my PT (physical therapy) exercises, I thought, how can I make this better? How can I learn new exercises? How can improve my existing exercises?
What would help me improve my physical therapy results?
When I finished my course of therapy my physical therapist at Recesso PT said get a trainer. A trainer at a gym might be good. Someone who says he know about back problems and can recommend changes to my regimen. This did not leave me with the best feeling, the most confidence in this path
I think about Waze ,the GPS navigation app, that uses crowdsourced information to improve the data. And it does so with amazing accuracy. Road conditions are supplied by the users. I do so. At times I’m very active with reports of conditions and at other I don’t bother at all.
Crowd sourced therapy app? Ultimately do the same with health information about people.
Crowd sourced prescription drug prices to find the best prices. I believe someone has done this. You would never know it because they may not have really marketed themselves that well.
My needs. I do Cat-Cow and Bridges and four other exercises. What do other people in the same boat do? What are their exercises? What are their outcomes? Do they want to upgrade or keep steady as is?
Herniated discs? What are people doing to improve their backs, from the trenches?
I don’t know how this app should look or work. I don’t know how you make this easy to use. I don’t know how you measure success with it.
Medical Tie-In
If you’re in PT you’ve most likely been prescribed this from one of your doctors. That’s the tie-in to the medical side and it’s just as important. You data should be sent to your doctor or made available. Both the exercise data and your therapist’s notes, evaluations and other matter that the therapist has investigated and recorded.
Physical Therapy and Revenue
How do you make money off it so it sustains itself, is a profitable business?
Advertising in the app is one idea. But the data should be a source of profit. Start with PT.
The app should be recommended as PT starts and the reason that PT recommends this is TBD.
When you finish your PT, you continue to use this app for TBD reasons.
One thing that you can do it make the app integral to the exercises. Either the exercises are managed from the app. I use an app, A HIIT Interval Timer, on my Android phone to direct my exercises. There’s no recording of when and where I did the exercises and this app can do this.
HIIT is not really the right app but it’s the best I’ve found when I surveyed apps at the time. It actually intended for interval training. It just happens to work well with the way I want to do my PT exercises
Using the app my PT can be involved in my care. He’ll know when, where and how much of my regimen I’ve done. If the phone sensors are engaged too, there’s added evidence I didn’t game the program.
Using the phone in the exercise:
- You can start the app and start the exercises and hold the phone in your hand, or strap it onto your body.
- When you move the movement is recorded by the phone’s sensors and recorded.
PT examines the phone’s data:
- The phone’s data is transferred from the phone to the cloud and possibly to the PT. Or the data is used in the cloud.
- A cloud based or PC based app uses the data.
- Analysis is performed on the data using the cloud/PC app.
Revenue can possibly be derived from the data collected from all the users.
- Improved exercises. We learn about what’s working and not working for many more users very quickly. Improved exercises can be sold to PTs either in the deal as part of the basic service or an up sell beyond the basic service.
- Improved knowledge. Surveying a few PTs I learned they intuitively know if their clients have worked out or not. Using this app they have a tool that might motivate more to do their homework. Also, for those like me that fastidiously did the exercises I gain from collecting and sharing my information by the PT having more data and evidence of what worked and what did not.
- Provide additional up charges? Insurance companies, Medicare, etc might be able to be billed more to cover the costs and possibly reward better PT companies. If the app/service is a boon, it should be rewarded with more revenue.
- Affiliate opportunities: Partner with companies and organizations that offer benefits to users. Highly segment the users to learn of their needs and wants and then make the offers to them.