A Sydney-based start-up launched this year is aiming to help patients manage chronic pain through a digitally delivered eight-week program.
The company, Amelio Health, connects insurance providers, rehabilitation providers, and patients with chronic pain through an integrated digital platform.
In this episode of the Talking HealthTech podcast, MetaOptima’s general manager Peter Birch chats to Kathy Hubble, the founder of Amelio Health.
Ms Hubble says one of the main problems with the way that chronic pain is managed in Australia is that there is too much reliance on pain medication. Her company focuses on managing pain through psychological and lifestyle changes, giving patients the option to reduce their medication dependence.
“We want to empower people with knowledge of all the medications they’re taking, let them have a choice about how they’re going to reduce medications”, says Ms Hubble.
Ms Hubble says Amelio Health is improving chronic pain management by bringing all the stakeholders together into the one digital environment – the patients, the doctors and the insurers.
The digital platform gathers data from the claimant as they work through the eight-week program, which includes modules on ‘Your Story and Why You Hurt’, ‘Tools For Change’, ‘Entrapment’s and Treatments’, ‘Planning Recovery’, ‘Changing your Brain’, ‘Building Resilience’, ‘Look at What You Have Achieved’ and ‘Next Steps’.
The data is then analysed by AI, which picks up on behavioural trends and tracks progress. This information is fed back to the claimant, insurer, and health provider, who then use it to inform treatment decisions.
According to Ms Hubble, the live data analysis allows the problem of chronic pain to be tackled from both sides as it reveals where in the process the change needs to be made.
By allowing chronic pain sufferers to access pain management online or through an app, Ms Hubble hopes that this will make the process more accessible to users located in rural areas and decrease long waiting periods for treatment.
“I wanted to find a way we could supply support in an online format, that anyone could access, anywhere”, she says.
This episode was posted onto the Talking HealthTech website on June 24, 2020.
