Healthcare has been left, right and centre in our lives for the past 2 years. Cutting through the noise of case numbers and health politics, two points have been worth noting in the tech world.
1) Investors are flocking into the space — the healthcare industry vertical saw the greatest sector absolute increase in VC funding in 2020, continuing through to 2021, with the 1H2021 volume being 2.6x that of 1H2020.
2) Patient empowerment has only accelerated. Growing prosumer trends (think, consumer DYI trend), and new ways of delivering healthcare are challenging the old hospital-centred care delivery system.
To date, we’ve seen a healthcare system that is:
- Very good at identifying and addressing symptoms — take how good we’ve been at increasing life expectancy. But we’ve been marginally goodat addressing root causes — see how chronic conditions still affect close to half of the developed world population and growing(making it the #1 number health challenge in those geographies).
- Very good at graduating doctors. But really bad at graduating enough of them and managing them in a sustainable way (i.e. work-life balance — read This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor, by Adam Kay).
- Very good at marketing a knowledge centred approach. But lost in knowledge and data silos, making evidence- and value-based exhaustive (!) review operationally impossible. [editor note: Manuel is revisiting the sampling biases chapters from Thinking Fast and Slowhere].
As an impact investor, we’ve been naturally drawn to the implications these challenges pose to healthcare patient outcomes. We’ve been excited by technologies:
- Helping the delivery of evidence-based medicine, through better patient data management, or simply by faster delivery of updated content.
- Enabling of value-based healthcare solutions through outcome assessments.
- Allowing simpler forms of medical interventions (less prescriptive, less interventive), but with a continuous deeper engagement, to better deliver root cause assessments of health conditions and long-term habit formation.
Kianava has been one of our latest investments in this space.
Kianava is offering an integrated, whole-body, medicine approach to monitor, address, and research chronic pain conditions — conditions affecting as much as 45% of Americans, 43.5% of British and close to 40% of Germans whose treatment journey is often inadequately focused in symptoms as opposed to root causes. This inadequate journey results in costly, lengthy, repetitive and patient journeys.
The company uses technology to combine conservative medicine practices with evidence-based alternative forms of therapy (e.g. nutrition, mental health, fitness, etc.) to build a complete overview of the patient’s whole body and mind. With a set of virtual healthcare programmes, it plans to identify and address the root causes of chronic pain, and while doing so it builds up the medical database to produce adequate research on its findings.
The outcome so far has been positive:
- 4.8/5 user rating
The first Kianava session really blew me away. So many loose pieces of the puzzle, my health story came together. You touched me deeply and picked me up. Patient, 26 yo.
- 95% attendance of the full programme
- Patients are reporting meaningfully accelerated chronic pain reduction during/after Kianava’s programmes
For the first time in 25 years I have no more pain! I am a completely new person! Life is fund again and is wonderful! Patient, 46 yo.
- At the same time, a scientific track record is being built for research purposes.
- Inbound doctor interest has been impressive, with weekly unsolicited applications.
Saman, Arnaud and Kian, co-founders of Kianava.
Saman, Kian and Arnaud came across as the experienced leadership team Europe needs to address its chronic pain patient journey challenges — their combined entrepreneurial, operational and technical expertise positioned Kianava as a strong team.
We’re excited to improve the lives of these chronic pain patients, build evidence around this contested space, and reduce the pressure these chronic conditions bring to under-resourced healthcare services.