Patient using Sword Health.
Courtesy: Sword Health
Pain management startup Sword Health on Tuesday announced a new artificial intelligence solution called Phoenix that patients can talk to for guidance during virtual physical therapy sessions.
Sword, founded in 2015, offers digital tools to help patients manage pain from home and avoid other treatments such as opioids and surgery. The company has used AI in its products since launch, but CEO Virgilio Pinto told CNBC that Phoenix offers users a more human-like experience.
Phoenix is designed to replicate the work of a care professional. Patients should feel like they have a physical therapist inside their home, Pinto said. Patients can talk directly to Phoenix about how they are feeling, and the new “specialist” can respond, provide feedback and adjust the difficulty and duration of the session in real time.
Al Saif patients join sessions using a tablet from the company that can track their movement. Pinto said Phoenix monitors their progress and, after each session, summarizes their performance data and sends it to one of Sword's human clinicians for review.
Currently, Sword's AI is able to analyze movement and provide simple feedback, but Phoenix is more conversational, Pinto said. Pinto added that Phoenix's ability to analyze patient data and make recommendations also helps the company's doctors work more efficiently.
Phoenix will suggest changes to the patient's next session, as well as a follow-up message about the session they completed. Pinto said that the human physician is the one who decides to accept, reject or modify these recommendations. Sword doctors have the authority to determine which exercises are appropriate for the patient, so Phoenix does not make any decisions independently.
“This is health care, so you will always need that final approval,” Pinto said in an interview. “We have strong guardrails in terms of how we do things.”
Patients can sign up for Sword if it is supported by their employer or health plan. Sword has already implemented more than 3 million AI-powered sessions with patients, according to a statement on Tuesday. Pinto said the company focused on commercial customers but wanted to make its solutions available to everyone.
Sword also said Tuesday it had raised $100 million in a secondary sale to provide liquidity to current and former employees and early investors. The company expects it will be profitable this year, but it raised an additional $30 million in an initial sale to update its valuation, Pinto said.
The company has raised a total of $340 million and is valued at $3 billion, according to the statement. It was valued at $2 billion in late 2021.
Sword said a mix of new and existing investors participated in the round, some of whom did not want to reveal their names. Venture firms such as Khosla Ventures, Founders Fund, and General Catalyst have previously invested in the company.
Sword has tested Phoenix with some patients using its Thrive digital physical therapy product. The company will continue to roll it out to more patients within Thrive and across its other offerings, including a pelvic health solution called “Bloom,” over the coming months, Pinto said.
