Founded in 2017, TheraWe Connect has a goal to bridge the learning gap between the home and the therapy center for parents of children with developmental disabilities. Their mission is to improve patient outcomes and make day-to-day life better for therapy practitioners and caregivers.
TheraWe’s founding team and advisory board bring experience in several child therapy specialties, patient communication, marketing, and business. They were frustrated by the confusion and fear they saw in parents of children in need of behavioral therapy. These families face barriers to the parent education and home implementation that is vital to the success of this kind of therapy. Parents of children with developmental issues experience anxiety over treatment details, wasted time explaining and re-explaining to new caregivers and therapists, and fear of losing progress when therapists change. On the other side, occupational therapists, speech therapists, physical therapists, and behavioral therapists experience overwork by spending hours outside of billable time writing long notes; blind spots in home implementation; and a breakdown in communication between therapists’ instructions. TheraWe was founded to solve both sides of this problem.
The app is a HIPPAA compliant, mobile video platform meant to bridge the gap between the therapy center and the home. It includes custom treatment videos, real-time updates for all approved caregivers at one time and from the same source, and a personal archive of videos. For therapists, this saves time because the videos erase the need for instructional notes. It also increases their visibility into how home treatment and other therapists’ treatments are going, allowing for greater consistency with treatment strategies. This decreases the stress on all sides and increases engagement across the care team, all providing stronger treatment outcomes.
There is clearly a market for a product like this. Families spend approximately $15,000 a year on services for children for special needs. There are three million children under 5 years old in therapy today. For this same age group, $46 billion is spent each year on pediatric services in the US.
TheraWe generates revenue by providing value to parents and allowing therapy centers to engage. After interviews from the team’s pilots, they decided on a monthly subscription for parents and are testing freemium upgrades and insurance coverage. On the therapy center side, TheraWe works to supplement existing management software.
TheraWe’s team see themselves as filling a gap in the industry, as there are practice management software solutions only for the therapy centers. Separately, there are parent-centered experiences that are not connected to the therapists. TheraWe does both. They have signed a letter of intent for integration with Theralytics as an integration partner.
In 2018, TheraWe made progress through self-funding and over $80,000 in donations. This allowed them to build a private beta of the platform, run pilots, and solicit useful feedback. After implementing the subsequent improvements, they have five locations implementing their software. Their go-to market is three-fold. It includes selling directly to therapy centers, allowing them to work with the most families they can. It also includes partnering with advocacy groups to be in greater contact directly with parents. Finally, they will use a growth effect as parents switch therapists or add to their care team, which already happened during one of their beta implementations.
Outside of direct sales, TheraWe plans to utilize niche social media groups, attend industry conferences, and integrate with practice management software solutions to raise awareness with therapy organizations.
View presentation slides here.
Co-founder Kirby Montgomery discussed TheraWe Connect with KC Digital Drive’s Health Innovation Team on May 29, 2019.