Kaia Health, a leader in digital musculoskeletal solutions, recently received program validation from the Validation Institute. This endorsement confirms the efficacy and reliability of Kaia’s innovative health services. The Validation Institute has played a crucial role in enhancing Kaia Health’s market credibility and proving their commitment to clinical excellence.
Essential Insights from Kaia Health’s Validation Achievements
- Program Validation from the Validation Institute: Kaia Health received the prestigious program validation for its digital musculoskeletal solutions, affirming its effectiveness and reliability. This validation elevates Kaia’s standing in a competitive market.
- Commitment to Clinical Excellence: Kaia Health’s commitment to clinical excellence is a cornerstone of their strategy, ensuring that their digital therapeutics meet rigorous healthcare standards. The Validation Institute plays a crucial role in certifying that commitment.
- Innovative Technology and Patient Care: Kaia Health utilizes advanced motion analysis technology to deliver therapy anywhere, enhancing the patient experience. This innovation is crucial for providing accessible and equitable care across diverse demographics.
- Impact of Validation Internally and Externally: The validation not only boosts Kaia Health’s credibility externally among clients and investors but also strengthens internal morale and commitment. The Validation Institute’s endorsement provides significant encouragement for continuous improvement and innovation.
Introduction
Validation Institute:
Hi everyone, I’m the Chief Executive Officer of Validation Institute and would like to welcome Nigel Orenstein who is president of Kaia Health and Al Lewis co-founder and advisor of the Validation Institute. Welcome Nigel.
Nigel Orenstein:
Thank you, nice to meet you.
Overview of Validation Institute’s Impact on Kaia Health
Validation Institute:
To start, I would like to tell everyone a little bit about Validation Institute. Validation Institute vets and validates the performance claims of health care companies around savings and outcomes.
Our highest level of validation is a program validation, which is when a company conducts a qualified trial and we can validate the savings and outcomes data of an entire product or solution.
So we are very excited to have Nigel with us today because Kaia recently was awarded a program validation for their digital musculoskeletal solution.
Nigel, welcome and congratulations to you and everyone in Kaia. I was hoping you could share with everyone how has Kaia been able to achieve these best-in-class outcomes, basically what’s your secret sauce.
Nigel Orenstein:
Sure, great to be with both of you. We appreciate the partnership and the validation issued and appreciate what you do in terms of bringing not just validity to companies like Kaia but a third-party verification to the market which I think we all agree is broadly needed.
For Kaia, clinical excellence has been a key part of our DNA since the beginning and our perspective is that digital therapeutics should be held to the same standards that you would expect a drug to be held to, that they should go through third-party verified randomized clinical trials and so that’s sort of what we set out to do.
What’s really our secret source is it to me comes down to really two things: one is that right, a commitment to clinical excellence and a commitment to outcomes, a myopic focus on the patient and making sure that the patient has a better and superior experience.
And then the second which is unique to Kaia is the motion analysis technology, right, and the ability to deliver a therapy anywhere, anytime through the chosen device of the consumer, which is the phone or the iPad.
I remember in the early days of electronic medical records, people tried to get the doctor to go outside of the EMR and the doctor just doesn’t do it, and so we think the same is true for digital therapeutics.
The Crucial Role of Clinical Excellence in Kaia Health’s Mission
Validation Institute:
Well, it’s great and you mentioned clinical excellence and can you talk a little bit more about why that is so important to your mission.
Nigel Orenstein:
I think it comes down to a few factors. The first is we’re in healthcare. Rising as healthcare companies, we should all aspire to clinical excellence.
We know that unfortunately, the healthcare system doesn’t always deliver clinical excellence, and we know that there’s enormous variation, right.
And so, one of the most amazing things about what Kaia can do right is that we can solve for, in the case of musculoskeletal pain, some of healthcare’s biggest problems.
One being access to care, the scalability, and the ability for people to access our care whether they are in a rural part of the country, an urban part of the country, and everywhere in between.
We solve a health equity problem; the camera doesn’t deliver a variation in care whether they’re tired or doesn’t get tired, doesn’t distinguish between wealth or ethnicity.
And so, we can solve a health equity problem. And the other thing that we can do, which I think is also unique to Kaia, is we’re not a threat to the in-person care, and we complement in-person care.
And so that enables us to really focus, as I said before, on the patient. And if we do that and deliver clinical excellence, ultimately, my belief is that we’ll build a great company.
How Program Validation Differentiates Kaia Health in a Crowded Market
Validation Institute:
Well, that’s great and in how will the program validation help you stand out, it is such a crowded marketplace out there so is it how will this affect you in the company?
Nigel Orenstein:
As you said, it’s a crowded marketplace, and the marketplace is crowded as you guys know only too well. Not just by musculoskeletal companies, but by every potential type of healthcare problem or opportunity that our clients are being pinged with, right? Whether it be smoking cessation or diabetes or cancer cardiovascular, right? The list goes on.
And that’s not just digital health companies; there are service companies, consultants, companies that can help you move to value-based care, and the list goes on.
So, it’s really really difficult to differentiate yourself and stand out. We’re fortunate that we’ve got to differentiate the solution in the motion analysis technology, so that’s one aspect of obviously how we stand out.
But our second big differentiator is clinical excellence, and your validation is absolutely phenomenal for us. It validates, it does actually, you know, two things that I don’t know whether you’re actually fully aware of. The first thing that it does, as you say, validates us to the market.
And even in the short time the press release has been out, the number of comments I’ve had, the number of calls I’ve had, has been fabulous.
And so, to the market, that is excellent. And obviously, to receive the program validation is enormously heartwarming for us, and obviously being the only digital MSK company to reach that level is a massive differentiator.
And as you guys obviously know only too well, the second digital health company which is also incredibly heartwarming.
But the second thing it does, which I don’t know whether you’re aware of this or not, but it’s phenomenal internally.
And so the years of work like that goes on behind the scenes—the clinical work, the work of our health coaches, the work of our engineers, the work of everybody that’s in the company that has been historically and is now—this brings enormous inner strength that what we’re doing is right.
And so the work you guys are doing not only, you should know, not only brings validation by you know to payers and self-insured employers and providers that we have a great solution, but it brings inner strength internally as well. And I’m sure if it’s done for us, it’s done for other companies as well.
Validation Institute:
It’s amazing to hear, we always hear how it benefits companies going out into the market but internally hearing that is it’s just amazing and the folks there have done a great job and deserve a round of applause.
I’m going to turn to Al for a second, Al you know you looked at this and uh you were the one that conducted the validation. What did you see or learn that sets Kai apart from other uh digital Health companies?
Al Lewis:
Well, as Nigel mentioned, there’s only one or actually, I guess, two other digital companies that have actually done RCTs, actual RCTs to basically the standards of, essential I’m exaggerating this a little, the FDA.
The idea that the two groups are equivalent: you don’t compare participants to non-participants, you don’t match participants, or use propensity scoring.
You actually get two similar groups of people. They both consent; they don’t know if they’re going to be in the study group or the control group, but you control for both what they look like and their willingness to participate, and you compare the two groups.
That’s very, very hard to do in the United States. I mean, it’s easy, but nobody wants to do it because internally it creates issues within an organization.
Validation Institute:
And can you talk since Kaia has gotten this program validation what makes a program validation different and why is achieving it an important milestone.
Al Lewis:
Well, it is a uh, and this is not to take anything away from the other validated companies in musculoskeletal elsewhere, but if you read carefully, uh, most of them have an asterisk that says, uh, you know, it could be that some of the difference was due to the difference in mindset between the participants and non-participants.
The, uh, the degree of asterisks on this validation is very low. It’s a high enough level of validation that I, as the co-founder of the Validation Institute and the CEO and quizmeister in Chief of Quizify, are not yet able to achieve this level for my own organization, Quizified.
You know, so we have the savings validation, which is the next one down, but to get to program validation, well, that requires a lot of commitment, a lot of effort. We haven’t even been able to achieve it yet; that’s how rare it is.
Evaluating the Significance of MSK Solutions: Insights from Validation Institute
Validation Institute:
In, in how should anyone evaluating an MSK solution interpret this, the importance of this.
Al Lewis:
Well, every MSK vendor will say that they have a secret sauce, technically it’s called Special Sauce. It was, uh, there’s two all-beef patties, Special Sauce on sesame seeds, but the difference is that, uh, have they tested this special sauce on an actual IRB level randomized control trial? And therein lies the bright-line distinction.
Validation Institute:
That is amazing, well thank you Al and Nigel for joining me today and if anyone is looking for more information on Kaia or their validation please go to validationinstitute.com and download their report for free. Thank you everyone and have a great day.
Al Lewis:
Thank you, good to see you.
Nigel Orenstein:
Nice to see you both.
