Backs to the future: site diagnoses pain
A SELF-assessment website for muscle and joint problems, which is designed to replicate a physiotherapist’s diagnosis and recommend treatment, has been boosted by £250,000 funding and is launching with a large health insurer imminently.
Founder Kirsten Lord, who has 26 years’ physiotherapy experience and in 1992 started The Physio Centres, Scotland’s largest private physiotherapy group, said that Physio-Wizard has been clinically proven to be 93 per cent as effective as seeing a health professional.
The platform is currently for people who have a back problem preventing them from going to work. It takes 15 minutes to complete and then tells the user what action they should take and what kind of health professional they need to seek help from. Lord plans to develop it further to address other muscle and joint issues. Companies that need to manage staff with back pain will guide sufferers to the website on the day they call in sick.
She said: ‘People often turn to Dr Google. It takes hours to research and often they reach the wrong conclusion. Back pain is our first module. It is very complex.’
Back pain accounts for 12.5 per cent of work absence and costs the economy about £17billion a year.
Lord said: ‘I’m hoping the NHS will be interested. Fourteen per cent of GP caseload is for treatment of lower back pain. We could divert people away from GPs so they see people they need to see. It’s taken us six years to get to this point.’
Physio Wizard attracted £250,000 from Scotland’s biggest angel investment syndicate, Archangels.