One in four humans lives with some form of chronic discomfort. In other words, more than 1.5 billion people worldwide suffer from chronic pain. The WHO considers chronic pain a disease in itself, declares its treatment "a human right" and describes chronic pain as "the greatest threat to quality of life worldwide."
One of the possible treatments for some types of pain and discomfort is physiotherapy. However, not all health systems include it in their range of services and not everyone can afford to pay for a professional to alleviate their situation. With the aim of making access to physiotherapy easier and expanding the human right to alleviate pain, young physiotherapist Tatiana Chavarriaga and her husband have launched HealthPhy.
This physiotherapy platform "allows professionals to perform remote treatments. The therapist can communicate with the patient through the platform and send them treatments and monitor the process in real time," explains the physiotherapist. For this breakthrough, Chavarriaga has been named as one of the winners of MIT Technology Review in Spanish's Innovators under 35 Latin America 2020.
The young innovator created HealthPhy with the aim of improving access to rehabilitation services in Colombia "because many people cannot access a professional." Chavarriaga's goal is to expand accessibility to health systems so that people in rural areas or those who have not been able to afford physiotherapy can do so. Through technology, this therapist aims to democratize digital rehabilitation. "Our goal is to change the idea that you have to live with pain," she adds.
In addition, this platform increases adherence to treatment. By reducing barriers such as the time and cost of travel to clinics and improving the physiotherapist-patient relationship, fewer people drop out of therapy early. With this virtuous circle, the well-being of individuals improves along with the income of professionals.
During the COVID-19 lockdown in Colombia, HealthPhy has enabled many patients to stay in contact with their physical therapists. In this way, the innovator has facilitated the sudden shift to telemedicine in Colombia, allowing both patients to continue to recover under the guidance of a professional and therapists to maintain their source of income despite the closure of their clinics due to the health crisis.
HealthPhy also provides services to companies: it allows employees to have access to physiotherapists within 24 hours to improve the well-being of the staff without the workers having to travel. In this way, companies also get their employees to be more productive.
HealthPhy was free in the first few months of the pandemic and now Chavarriaga is looking to establish this platform as the leading platform in Colombia for telemedicine and telerehabilitation. She then hopes to expand into Latin America and Spain: "Our goal is to reach the Spanish-speaking population because this solution does not exist in Spanish."
For Enrique Galindo, secretary of Outreach at the Institute of Biotechnology of the Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and member of the Innovators under 35 Latin America 2020 jury, Chavarriaga's project "would allow better monitoring of rehabilitation programs, which usually face the problem of patient abandonment and limited follow-up by therapists." The expert believes that HealthPhy "would have an impact on the health of the population."
