AI-powered virtual care for chronic lung disease
Victor Sadauskas, Founder
Hey YC, we're Vaughn and Victor, and we're excited to announce the public launch of Kivo Health!
We treat chronic lung disease with rehab over Zoom. We offer an 8-week remote program that keeps people out of the hospital, and can save payers $6,000 per patient by reducing hospital stays.
How we help
Chronic lung disease affects 16M people in the US, resulting in $50B in annual spend due to recurrent hospitalizations.
Pulmonary rehab (PR) is like physical rehab for your lungs. It includes guided exercise, breathing techniques, and a full education program which teaches people to manage their lung condition.
PR has strong clinical evidence: it can improve clinical outcomes, reduce hospital bed-days by 62%, save payers between $6-10k for every patient, and help patients feel better.
This life changing therapy has been around for decades, but tragically only 3% of eligible patients are getting it. Why? Access.
Often, people with COPD or other lung disease find it challenging to walk up a flight of stairs. Traveling 30-45 minutes to a PR center twice a week is a lot harder, especially for people without transport or the ability to pay for gas and parking.
Kivo Health solves access by providing telehealth PR, so patients can be treated comfortably at home.
How it works
We ship people our Kivo Kit, which has a cell-connected iPad, a Bluetooth pulse oximeter, and exercise equipment.
Patients join live video sessions twice a week for 2 months, with one of our talented respiratory therapists.
During the sessions, our therapists are:
- Monitoring our patients with realtime pulse oximetry
- Improving their lung function with exercise
- Teaching them breathing techniques, inhaler use, and a lot of other key lessons.
Wins
We're building Kivo to help patients get access to pulmonary rehab. But it's the stories that make us feel great about what we're doing. Here's a few examples.
1. One patient told us that she'd been using her inhaler wrong for over 20 years, until she learned proper technique from Kivo.
2. Another patient told us that she loved Kivo so much, she wrote a letter to her pulmonologist telling him that he should refer all of his patients to our program.
3. During our first cohort, we had a patient that was feeling the signs of a lung exacerbation one day. These are dangerous because people often end up in the ER, or even full hospitalization (which costs $19k on average!). Because she had learned from Kivo how to recognize the signs of an exacerbation, she immediately got a course of steroids from her doctor and felt better quickly. This could have made the difference between a hospital visit and relaxing at home.
How you can help
- If you have a family member or friend with COPD or other lung disease, tell them about Kivo Health! Note - patients need to be referred by their physician.
- Also, we'd appreciate any intros to pulmonologists - email us at hello@kivohealth.com.
Much love, Victor and Vaughn
Where to find us
Email: hello@kivohealth.com
YC Sign Photo
What is the core problem you are solving? Why is this a big problem? What made you decide to work on it?
Pulmonary rehab is the gold standard for non-pharma treatment of COPD and other lung diseases. However, only 3% of eligible patients are getting this life-changing therapy, because they can’t access it: they live too far away from a rehab center, or just can’t get there in person without help. We founded Kivo Health to solve this access problem, by delivering rehab to patients over live video.