New innovators: Salaso Health Solutions offers physiotherapists help

Most people given rehabilitative exercises to do by a physiotherapist start off with great intentions. They do their exercises assiduously for a few days but then their resolve weakens and eventually many stop. According to chartered physiotherapist, Aoife Ní Mhuirí, "Up to 70 per cent of patients don't do their home exercise programmes, often because they are unsure of what to do, can't remember the exercises or simply forget to carry out their daily exercise routine."

Ní Mhuirí set up Tralee-based ehealth technology company Salaso Health Solutions in 2011 and it now employs seven people.

“The essence of our business is to help patients do their prescribed home exercises more effectively,” she says. “Our video-based solution supports people in learning and carrying out their exercises, and we help patients from all walks of life to recover faster from injury and to manage pain and other chronic long-term conditions with exercise.”

Ní Mhuirí is a specialist in sports medicine and former physiotherapist to the Kerry senior football team. She has also worked as a lecturer in health and fitness at the Institute of Technology in Tralee (ITT).

“I have always believed strongly in the power and value of exercise to improve health and well-being – and help to rehabilitate [after] injury,” she says. “From the time I spent teaching and particularly the experience I gained in developing multimedia e-learning projects at ITT, I could see an important application for educational and e-learning methods in clinical practice to teach and support home exercise programmes.”

The company has built a video library of more than 1,200 exercises which physiotherapists and other clinicians can access and invite their patients to log on to. The patient is then linked remotely with the therapist, who can monitor their progress and make adjustments where necessary. The system works with a PC or tablet, there is also an app and a smart TV version is in development.

Ní Mhuirí says older people who may live some distance from a treatment centre or those who can’t attend for other reasons could benefit considerably from this approach.

“Technology is not really a barrier,” she says. “We are continually surprised by the number of older people with tablets and iPads who are well able to use them.”

The Salaso solution is cloud hosted so the product can be sold and delivered around the world.

However, for now, the company’s focus is on cracking the Irish, UK and northern European markets. It sells at industry conferences and through professional networks such as the Irish Society of Chartered Physiotherapists. It is in the process of setting up an online sales channel.

Salaso’s software was developed from scratch in-house and Ní Mhuirí estimates development costs this far at about €450,000. Next year the company plans to launch a funding round to accelerate its growth.

To date funding has come from their own resources, family and friends, the Kerry Enterprise Board, Enterprise Ireland, a US-based VC and an angel investor.

Salaso’s main competition comes from two overseas companies. However, Ní Mhuirí points out that both specialise in content delivery only.

“With their products the information goes from physiotherapist to patient. We are the first company that has the two-way data play that measures and gathers outcomes and delivers valuable data on the effectiveness of targeted exercise therapy.

“This not only helps inform clinical decisions to improve treatment, but also delivers aggregated data to healthcare and other organisations that proves the value of exercise programmes in improving health, preventing immobility and delivering cost efficiencies across the entire healthcare system,” Ní Mhuirí says.