Reflexion Health, a San Diego startup developing a system that uses Microsoft’s Kinect motion sensing system to help physical therapy patients with their rehab, has raised $4.25 million in seed funding from the West Health Investment Fund.
Reflexion CEO and co-founder Spencer Hutchins tells me the company plans to use the funding to advance development of its interactive software, and to test the idea of marketing its technology as “prescription software.” Instead of selling its software as a service directly to consumers, Reflexion plans to enroll doctors and physical therapists as resellers who would prescribe the program in much the same way caregivers prescribe other medical products.
The approach would be fundamentally different from asking caregivers to recommend the system as “a tool you can use on your own,” Hutchins says.
The Web-based technology is being spun out of San Diego’s West Health Institute, which lifted the curtain last month on a prototype system called the Reflexion Rehabilitation Measurement Tool (RMT). Reflexion is the second startup to emerge from the nonprofit institute, and is following the wireless fetal monitor startup Sense4Baby across the institute’s parking lot and into the nearby West Health Incubator.
The West Health Investment Fund, West Health Incubator, West Health Institute, and West Health Policy Center are affiliated organizations, and they share a mutual goal of working to reduce the costs of healthcare. The telemarketing billionaires Gary and Mary West established all four organizations, although the investment fund and incubator were created as for-profit entities, while the institute and policy center are nonprofits supported by the Gary and Mary West Foundation.
In a telephone interview, Reflexion’s Hutchins says the entire equity round came from the West Health Investment Fund, and will be used by Reflexion to demonstrate the
