DarioHealth Expands Further Into Digital Musculoskeletal Market With PhysiMax Acquisition

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Musculoskeletal conditions including injuries, age-related degeneration, movement disorders, and chronic pain affect over 126 million Americans and cost about $213 billion each year to treat. The massive space includes common problems like back pain, arthritis, gout, and osteoporosis among others where treatment can get prohibitively expensive because it often requires long-term or ongoing care. 

Without physical therapy, pain management, and other treatments aimed at either reducing pain or restoring functionality to the affected area, temporary injuries can turn into permanent disabilities and chronic conditions can worsen at a faster rate.

DarioHealth Corp. DRIO is one example of a company working to address the need for an effective, affordable, and accessible solution ever since its acquisition of Upright Technologies in January 2021. The company announced last month the acquisition of PhysiMax, which it believes represents the next step in that goal. Here’s what DarioHealth is building through its acquisitions and how it hopes to impact the musculoskeletal market.

Dario Move: A Digital Musculoskeletal Solution

Dario Move, which launched last October, is the company’s integrated digital physical therapy platform. Even before the PhysiMax acquisition, the platform offered a range of essential musculoskeletal health services including:

• Biofeedback sensors
• Personalized, evidence-based exercise programs
• Real-time feedback to improve movement
• Access to physical therapists and coaches

The reported aim is to not only make ongoing care more affordable by increasing the range of services a patient can receive remotely but improving a patient’s engagement with their treatment. Rather than engaging in physical therapy only during a few in-person sessions with a physical therapist, patients can continue their exercises, stretches, and other management techniques at home, with evidence-based programs and real-time feedback.

What The PhysiMax Acquisition Brings To Dario Move

PhysiMax is a provider of musculoskeletal functional screening, predictive risk assessment, and computer vision technology that’s currently used by teams in the NBA and NFL to screen and assess players’ injuries and generate evidence-based personal training programs.

Through the acquisition, DarioHealth likely plans to add that tech to Dario Move. With that cutting-edge technology, the musculoskeletal health platform might offer users more advanced screening and assessment tools and even more personalized training programs.

Above all, it could help further drive down the costs of premium care like this as the AI-powered services can handle some of the tasks previously done by DarioHealth’s physical therapy experts. 

In a statement on the acquisition, Erez Raphael, the CEO of DarioHealth said, “We believe that PhysiMax's technology strengthens our ability to scale highly effective treatments for musculoskeletal health and reduce the burden on Dario professional human support. PhysiMax's technology supports rapid growth of membership without the traditional limitations of MSK care delivered by humans.”

While the digital health market remains highly fragmented, many of the key players in the space are still focused on providing narrow scope products that offer a limited range of functionality. More than 90,000 new digital health apps were added to app stores in 2020 alone, bringing the total to over 350,000. 

As a result, leading health insurance providers like Aetna and UnitedHealth Group Inc. UNH have to contract with dozens of different companies in order to deliver comprehensive digital solutions in their health plans. 

According to the IQVIA digital health trends report, Aetna works with at least 10 different digital health apps, for example, each offering a single solution or limited range of solutions. UnitedHealth Group works with at least six different apps. That also means patients with multiple conditions may need to switch between apps to access services related to each condition.

Dario Move, on the other hand, is part of DarioHealth’s overall goal of creating a comprehensive solution that can provide a full range of services. This expansion of musculoskeletal care adds to a platform that already includes solutions for diabetes, hypertension, weight management, and behavioral health.

This post contains sponsored advertising content. This content is for informational purposes only and is not intended to be investing advice.