The Chronicle Herald (Provincial)
Kinduct shifting focus to health care
Halifax-based Kinduct Technologies has signed an contract with the Nova Scotia Health Authority that will allow the roll-out of a new program to improve the treatment of orthopedic patients in the province.
The contract nails down the details of an agreement announced in April, when the NSHA teamed up with Kinduct, Montreal-based Emovi Inc., and Halifax's OrthoMX to reveal a new suite of digital tools to aid orthopedic treatment. The goal is to help people being considered for knee, hip and lower back surgery, and to do so with technology made in Nova Scotia.
What it means for the patient is shorter wait times as the suite of digital products will help the healthcare system determine whether a patient needs to see a surgeon or should receive other treatments. The tools can also aid recovery from surgery by informing patients and providing a customized, data-based recovery plan.
What it means for Kinduct is that the tech company plans to shift its focus over the next few years from the sports medicine and training market to the healthcare market. Its team has been working on the orthopedic product for a decade and believes health care represents a bigger opportunity than sports.
The company's health-care market is “going to dwarf [sports] in the next three to four years,” said Kinduct founder and CEO Travis McDonough in an interview. “We see a complete reversal for us. Sport has been an interesting petri dish for us where we've developed and tested the product, and it is a good market. But this is now ready for prime time.”
With a current staff of about 70 people, Kinduct has done well with its Athlete Management System, which is used by well over 100 professional and elite sports organizations. The software helps these organizations collect and analyze data on one centralized platform, leading to more informed decisions about training and healthcare for athletes.
McDonough and Allan Hennigar, Kinduct's subject matter expert in healthcare, said partners in the NSHA project have been beta-testing the suite of products with high satisfaction ratings from patients. In the coming year, they will onboard thousands of Nova Scotian patients, and the platform will be made available to 1,000 general practitioners, 250 physiotherapists and 60 surgeons.
The products operate as a unit with each company bringing different features. Kinduct provides the basic platform with the user interface and a library of data. Emovi has produced a digital tool that assesses a patient's knee joint functions, and OrthoMX — co-founded by Halifax medtech business development specialist Barbara Campbell and NSHA orthopaedic surgeon Michael Dunbar — has developed the InStride mobile app, which assesses the walking patterns of orthopedic patients. Together, they received $2 million in backing from the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency to launch the NSHA project.
And over the next few years, Kinduct aims to get its medtech product into more hospitals and health-care facilities. McDonough said his company, OrthoMX, and Emovi are able to sell their own products independently while giving customers the option of also bring aboard the other members of the NSHA project. Kinduct itself is already well into the sales cycle.
“We have some very significant whales at the end of a hook,” said McDonough. “We have been talking to a hospital supply organization who supplies 6,000 hospital with a range of product, including both hardware and software. There are individual hospitals as well.”