West Health Investment Fund Sinks $7.5M into Reflexion Health

Reflexion Health, Vera, Microsoft Kinect for Windows

The Gary and Mary West Health Investment Fund said it has invested $7.5 million in 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.

Reflexion Health raised $4.25 million in seed funding from the same investment fund when the company moved into the Gary and Mary West Incubator in 2012. The startup’s first product, dubbed Vera, uses the Kinect motion tracking system and a personal computer, and provides interactive feedback and educational information to patients while they are exercising. Pilot studies using the system are underway at the Center for Connected Health, a division of Partners HealthCare in Boston, MA, and at Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego.

Instead of giving patients photocopied handouts that illustrate their exercise regime, Vera provides instructional video and full-body video game mechanics to patients in their home, using the Microsoft Kinect for Windows. The Web-based system coaches patients through their rehab exercises, monitors their performance, and enables physical therapists and physicians to track a patient’s rehabilitation progress in real time.

In a statement, Kelly Randich, the lead physical therapist at Rady’s Children’s Hospital, says, “We need technologies like Vera to expedite the rehab process by leveraging our highly-skilled therapists to provide more direct patient care, using evidence-based, manual therapy techniques. We are excited to be working with Reflexion Health to help us take better, more efficient care of our patients with orthopedic injuries.”

The funding for Reflexion Health follows a $5 million investment that the Gary and Mary West Health Investment Fund made in Svelte Medical Systems of New Providence, NJ, earlier this month. Svelte said the $5 million is in addition to $22 million in recently raised capital, and will be used to accelerate the company’s efforts to win regulatory approval for its “all-in-one” coronary stenting system. The company says its technology eliminates the need for conventional guide wires and balloons used in percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty, a minimally invasive procedure to open blocked coronary arteries.

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.