Sword Health to Roll Out AI Assistant for Physical Therapy

Sword Health has introduced an artificial intelligence (AI) assistant called Phoenix that uses natural conversation to guide and react to patients during their physical therapy sessions.

The firm has also announced a $130 million funding round that brings its total funding to $340 million to date and values it at $3 billion — a figure that is 50% higher than its previous valuation, Sword Health said in a Tuesday (June 4) press release.

Phoenix will be rolled out and integrated into the company’s platform throughout 2024, beginning with its solution for back, joint and muscle pain called Thrive and its solution for women’s pelvic healthcare called Bloom, according to the release.

“With more than 3 million AI sessions delivered to date, we’ve proven that our AI Care model is able to deliver on our initial vision of using AI to make access to high-quality care readily available, removing barriers to access to care, while cutting millions of dollars in healthcare waste for our clients,” Virgilio “V” Bento, founder and CEO of Sword Health, said in the release.

Phoenix is designed to deliver care to patients anywhere and at any time, according to the release. It is currently available to more than 10,000 employers on three continents.

Before and during a physical therapy session, the AI assistant engages the patient in real-time dialogue to assess how they are feeling, suggest changes to the session and provide motivation, the release said. After the session, it summarizes the patient’s performance data to help a human clinician optimize their progress.

With the capital raises in its latest funding round, Sword Health will provide liquidity to current and former employees and early investors, explore other opportunities for care delivery, and expand its solutions into new markets and categories, per the release.

“AI is the only way to deliver personalized and accessible healthcare to everyone,” Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures, which is an investor in Sword Health, said in the release. “We bet on Sword early on based on their bold vision of creating a new category of healthcare powered by AI.”

Improving healthcare and medicine are among the most promising use cases for generative AI, PYMNTS reported in December 2023.

The technology has been applied to areas including medical imaging and pathology, telemedicine, personalized patient engagement, new drug discovery, remote monitoring, administrative tasks, electronic health record (EHR), clinical decisioning and beyond.

The generative AI market for healthcare is projected to reach $22 billion by 2032, according to “Generative AI Can Elevate Health and Revolutionize Healthcare,” a PYMNTS Intelligence and AI-ID collaboration.