Raccoon.Recovery: a new generation of physical rehab devices
This is a proprietary material prepared with a help of our partner – MIT Enterprise Forum CEE.
Read the second part of the interview via the link.
„Video games are really useful!”– you will tell your parents and grandmother, and confirm your defiant statement with the story of a successful Ukrainian startup Raccoon.Recovery, which simply changes our world for the better! In the first part of the post, the CEO of the startup Svitlana Malovana talks about the project, its origins, development, and mission after its transformation, and the challenges that the Raccoon.Recovery team has been struggling with.
My name is Svitlana, I am CEO and co-founder at Raccoon.World. I have a legal background and 8 years in business development and scaling. 6 years ago I founded the first startup-oriented legal company in Ukraine – Olans Group. After close communication with tech enthusiasts, I decided that I couldn’t stay aside and had to launch my own startup. 3 years ago, together with our CTO Vitaliy Tolkachov and Tech Engineer Alex Chernegov, we founded Raccoon.World. Now it is 16 of us who are located in Ukraine, Poland, and Germany. Besides me, the core team has 3 amazing people and great professionals. Our CPO Alex Radovichenko is like a Swiss knife, combining skills in product and business development, CMO Anna Bezrodna mixes a very structural approach with «marketing craziness», and CTO Vitaliy Tolkachov is responsible for hardware development, manufacturing and… happiness in our team.
Raccoon.Recovery is a physical rehab tool based on video gaming, Big Data, and AI to treat patients after injuries and neurological diseases.
Actually, before Raccoon.Recovery my team was developing controllers for video games and virtual reality that were fixed on a palm. Suddenly, it turned out that our customers had used these controllers after injuries or a stroke. Their hands were injured, so they could not use a classical mouse. Then something almost magical happened.
The physical therapists of these people could not believe why the rehabilitation was so fast. This made us pivot from video-game controllers to hand-rehab-controllers with full-scaled monitoring and analysing software. Thus Raccoon’s team accidentally made playing video games good for the health. We have started from hands because we have experience in creating controllers. After the hand, we will scale to the whole body.
It is hard to imagine our lives without Raccoon! The startup is in our blood and heart. But… If it was no Raccoon, we would definitely launch another startup. Because we are born entrepreneurs. And it will be 100% making a social impact. Between helping people and making money we always choose both.
Every year more than 275 M people need physical therapy. At the same time, according to the World Confederation of Physical Therapy, there are 700 patients per 1 PT each year, while the maximum serviceable quantity is 300. We help solve this lack of therapists by providing a solution that helps to almost double the number of patients one specialist can treat. We help people after injuries and neurological diseases to reach 3x better outcomes from physiotherapy and rehabilitation centers to increase revenue up to +150%.
Our solution is mobile. It consists of the controller and sensors that can be taken anywhere and act as manipulators and assessment tools at the same time. Our application allows to choose a rehabilitation goal and build the course according to it. It becomes possible to recover while playing video games, and the patient’s progress can be monitored remotely. This enhances the patient’s involvement in the rehabilitation process, saves the physiotherapist’s time thanks to automation, and increases the revenue for rehabilitation centers.
There are several solutions on the market that use sensors and video games for rehabilitation purposes. Current solutions cannot fully address all pain-points of people who need physical rehabilitation and rehab centers. Raccoon.Recovery belongs to a new generation of physical rehab devices and makes the rehabilitation process engaging.
We are the only tool that provides goal-oriented personalized courses. While our competitors show the results of improved rotation and extension of the arm, we decided to start from the accurately reflecting goals of the patient. The rotation improved by 10 percent says nothing to the patient. Does it mean that the patient will be able to eat on his own? Raccoon.Recovery focuses on personal smart goals in rehabilitation, e.g. “eat by myself in 3 weeks” or “play the piano by a half year”. Based on this goal and the current patient’s physical and medical condition, our solution will build a rehabilitation course as well as adjust it depending on progress or regression. Raccoon.Recovery gathers 150+ parameters of rehab Big Data, including personal data (20 parameters like age, gender, hobbies, etc.), examination test results, rehabilitation goal, indicators of the psycho-emotional condition, a log of events in games, goniometric and dynamometric data. AI algorithms automate and enhance the accuracy of certain critical physiotherapy tasks like course creation, prediction of its duration, and constant adjustment. Due to automated patient examination and AI-based mistake-proof treatment prescription, patients get efficient rehab courses based on Big Data analysis. Raccoon.Recovery provides a possibility for rehab centers to increase productivity and treat more patients at the same time.
We are the only tool that uses existing video games for rehabilitation purposes. Raccoon.Recovery can be easily integrated with existing video games. Gamification helps to increase the number of repetitive movements per session, and there is no limit for exercises that can cause bad effects, according to research by the St George’s University of London. The more the better. However, simple games without a story provided by our competitors are as boring as regular exercises and patients tend to drop the course after 3 or 4 sessions. Raccoon.Recovery can be easily integrated with any game and gamification keeps patients motivated. As a result, they don’t drop the course and make more repetitive movements per session. With our solution, patients can choose games based on their hobbies and interests and restore their physical condition by playing games. Together with scientists and rehab specialists, we made a list of suggested scenario-based video games for non-gamers. Moreover, research shows that people aged 55+ are even more involved in therapy based on gamification than young people.
From a business point of view, the best proof is that great partners and clients believe in us and start cooperation. The product was appreciated by such big players on the German rehab market as Max Planck Institute, Charite, Wartenberg Clinic, etc. Now we are preparing a pilot with PZU Zdrowie that will take place in one of their clinics. During our field market research in Poland, we have also already got several requests from rehab centers. Raccoon team’s right approach to business is valued by the EU (we’ve got Horizon 2020 financing) and our investors and mentors, and we have grants in services from strong partners like Amazon (200K euro) and Google (20K euro).
Our main customers are rehab centers (with end-users – physiotherapists and patients). Separately we have options for self-employed PT, institutes, and patients.
Now, to prove the business model, gather Big Rehab Data for our AI, and earn first money, we have launched our initial solution for hand rehabilitation without AI in Germany and now are entering the Polish market. We already have 8 paying clients – rehabilitation centers, and are proud of several pilots with great partners. Together with Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences (Germany), we are testing inpatient rehabilitation and integration of our product in German rehab system. During the pilot with PZU Zdrowie that is about to start, we will be testing the effectiveness of using our product both in the clinic and for telerehabilitation. I am also especially proud of the validation of GDPR compliance and CE mark certification. Now we are preparing for an official launch of the product for the whole arm (hand+elbow+shoulder) that will be presented this spring and will allow us to significantly increase q-ty of treated patients.
I might say that the biggest difficulty was to launch the product on the market. After we’ve done the proof of concept and tested MVBP, the time for the official launch came. As we develop a medical device that deals with patient data, we had double trouble at the same time – GDPR and certification. Actually, we knew that it was tough, but we had underestimated it! Firstly we wanted to do everything by ourselves and spent more than half a year trying. But then we partnered with reliable companies that helped us and gave the right direction.
Read the second part of the interview via the link.