Why we started Exakt Health

The idea for Exakt Health comes from a personal experience when trying to get treatment for my sports injury 2 years ago. I went to at least 4 different specialists and lost 6 months trying to find the right help. Telling myself to give it one more try I was lucky to find Maryke. Maryke is the founder of sports injury physio. As part of her online consultation, she was able to diagnose me correctly. She also gave me a structured rehabilitation plan to follow, which we would adjust on a weekly basis.

After finally getting better, I was still frustrated that I had to spend hours of research and more than a thousand Euros to get the help I needed to recover from my injury. Discussing my frustration with my co-founder Lucia, an idea was born: Why don’t we use our skill-set of building mobile Apps to improve the patient experience of people that deal with sports injuries?

The High Impact Of Sports Injuries

Sports injury have a high impact on the physical and mental wellbeing of the injured person. It starts with the frustration of no longer being able to participate in a long awaited race or social sport activities. Then there is the anxiety of loosing all the progress made in training so far. And the simple fact that you can no longer do what you have previously enjoyed like running, cycling or football – even temporarily – can increase your stress and anxiety levels significantly. And the longer the recovery takes, the more demoralising it becomes. Making it harder to get motivated to do any physical activity and return to your healthy sport habits before the injury.

Sports injuries are unfortunately wide-spread. Simply by talking to my friends I realised that an overwhelming majority has dealt with some sort of sports related injury in the last 2 years. A more systematic analysis has found that up to 79% of recreational runners injure themselves in a 6-months time period. And even worse, many people quickly reinjure themselves after returning to sports. Mostly because they did not follow a systematic rehabilitation plan to properly recover.

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Why The Current Solution Does Not Work

In Germany, it is not unusual to wait more than a month to get a specialist appointment. Once you have your long-awaited appointment, you might be surprised how quick it is already over. An orthopedist has to treat an average of 61 patients on a normal day. That leaves them with a staggering low of 11 minutes per patient. 11 minutes, in which they are expected to perform an assessment, make a diagnosis and explain detailed treatment advice. Back with Maryke my initial consultation took a solid 45 minutes to get a good idea of my injury. Time that doctors don’t have in the public healthcare system. It is then not surprising to see that many, who seek treatment for their sports injury, leave the doctors office wondering whether they can trust their diagnosis or what actions they should take next.

Recovering From Sports Injury With Exakt Health

At Exakt Health we believe that we can do much better. In many sports injury cases there are already clear, clinically established diagnosis and treatment guidelines. It is simply a matter of making them accessible to the patient. Knowing that the time of doctors and physios is a scare resource, we use technology to bridge the gap. By making their expertise directly useable for the patient, we can democratise the access to best-in-class treatment. A treatment that would have previously been limited to professional athletes or require high out-of-pocket payment

With the Exakt Health app users can get access to evidence-based rehabilitation plans. The rehabilitation plans include daily exercise suggestions and treatment advice, which adjust based on the users' progress. By collecting feedback about effort and pain levels, we can determine the right speed for the progression through the rehabilitation plan.

At the end of the plan, users emerge as better athletes. They will be less prone to re-injury after having addressed their weak spots and improved their overall strength profile. If you can relate to our mission and would like to keep up-to-date with our developments, you can now download the App from the mobile app stores.