Health Tech: eCovery cooperates with AOK PLUS

After an accident, an operation or just general problems with the hip, knee or back, it is important – but also damn difficult – to exercise regularly at home. After all, it’s not just pain that needs to be overcome, but above all the coach potato inside each of us. Together with doctors, psychologists and experts from health insurance companies, the Leipzig-based startup eCovery has developed a therapy app that is designed to support patients with exercise videos and tools for motivation and self-monitoring during therapy at home. The intelligent app is now even considered a medical device. Co-founder Benedict Rehbein reports on the long road there and explains how artificial intelligence supports people in prevention and recovery.

Benedict Rehbein (right) in a meeting with eCovery Team and AOK PLUS

Benedict, hats off! You’ve already had your own communications agency in Leipzig for many years and are now really taking off with eCovery, too. How did that come about?

I think it’s a question of type. I’m simply enthusiastic and have retained my childlike thirst for discovery. When my good friend and co-founder Alexander Georgi told me about the need for a home therapy app, I immediately thought: we have to do that, otherwise someone else will.

What happened next?

We presented the concept at the SMILE Founders’ Night 2017 and were awarded “Best Startup Idea.” That gave us even more encouragement. So we developed the business model and brought other experts on board, including our lawyer Marcus Rehwald, biologist Katja Krempler, psychologist Henrike Wandrer and a few others. In addition, we involved doctors and experts from health insurance companies in the process right from the start via our network. As a result, we were in a really good position and were able to develop a product that convinced patients, doctors and health insurers alike.

Your app is declared as a “medical product”. How does it differ from classic training apps?

A medical product is aimed at patients, i.e. people with a diagnosed injury or illness – a group of people that requires special protection. The process to become such a product is therefore insanely complex, which is why we first had to go through almost three years from the idea to classification as a medical device. eCovery is based on medical principles and studies. We had to go through a risk assessment and set up an office specifically to take care of quality management. So our app is not for fitness training, but is a medically based digital therapy. At the beginning of use, we take a medical history. After each unit, the user indicates whether and how pain and functional capacity have changed. Every six weeks, we also create a medical score with the users, which helps the patients themselves, but also their therapists, with the evaluation.

How does artificial intelligence come into play here?

Our AI helps us with automated evaluation and adjustment of training intensity. For example, if users indicate that the workout was too easy or too hard, or that they had particular pain, the exercises are adapted to their needs. We also contact those who forget or avoid certain exercises directly. In this process, our AI gets smarter and smarter and can adapt even better to the patients. For some time now, we have also been experimenting with sensors and cameras so that in the future we can also give users live feedback on whether they are performing the exercises correctly.

You recently started a pilot project with AOK PLUS, how did that come about?

The contact came about through the Leipzig SpinLab Accelerator. AOK PLUS is a partner there and had wanted a tool for hybrid care in which physiotherapy practices are also on board. This is how our pilot project came about. This is currently running in various cities in Saxony and Thuringia. We are working with about 15 practices.

The eCovery team at „SpinLab“ in Leipzig

Was there a particular challenge in the collaboration?

Of course, the coordination processes in a health insurance company are more complex and protracted than in a startup. For us as founders, that meant staying patient and persevering. But AOK PLUS supported us wonderfully with its experts and its team of lawyers. There were so many questions to clarify: How do we bill correctly? How should prescriptions be designed and filled? What should the contracts with the physiotherapy practices look like? We learned an incredible amount in this joint process. Today, several thousand people are already using eCovery and exercising against their pain. The feedback from these users helps us to get even better.

Older people suffer particularly often from knee, back or hip problems. But is the app suitable for them at all?

Absolutely! We have designed the app to be extra user-friendly for this target group. Anyone who can write a WhatsApp message to their grandchild can also manage with eCovery. We conducted a study with test subjects of all ages. With surprising results: Our older users actually stay on the ball more consistently than the younger ones, who sometimes “swipe away” the reminder to train between many other messages when in doubt. Most members of the over-60 generation are quite fit when it comes to using their smartphones, and we “youngsters” tend to underestimate them in this respect.

Contact

Web: ecovery.de

LinkedIn: Benedict Rehbein