Shane Lowe and Alex Haslehurst launched Virtue Health – a digital musculoskeletal (MSK) health platform – back in 2019 with a plan to change the workplace.
How do you prevent the muscular condition, which is often tied to severe neck and back pain, from affecting so many workers?
Rising inactivity due to ill-health has been a worrying trend in the UK over the past few years, and MSK disorders accounted for 7.3m workings days lost across all industries from 2021 to 2022 alone.
“You can’t just ask a person to, you know, sit straight at the desk and then the pain goes away,” Lowe told City A.M.
“It has to be much more clinical,” he added.
Five years and 27 countries later, the UK-based start-up has secured its latest funding round of $4m (£3.2m), bringing its total to $7m (£5.56m).
The investment will be put towards advancing the platform in new and current markets, Lowe said, although the UK will remain a large focus for the team.
“We’ve got enough evidence now to say that this works at scale and now the task is to scale it,” Lowe said.
The platform uses AI to analyse and personalise programmes for users to prevent MSK from occurring in the first place, he said, which helps set Virtue Health apart from its competitors.
So far, 92 per cent of Virtue Health users have reported reduced pain and symptoms.
While funding challenges have been a growing concern for Britain’s SMEs, Lowe said the milestones often accumulate with time if the product and timing is right.
“When you’re actually doing it, you put your head down, you develop these relationships over the past couple of years, you know these people and they know what your business is,” Lowe said.
“It’s definitely a slow burn,” he added.
Simon Menashy, partner at MMC Ventures, said: “We’ve been tracking Vitrue Health and the evolution of its computer vision technology for several years.
“The team is highly technical with a strong clinical skill set, and we believe they’ve found a strong use case with evidenced product-market fit that can eliminate musculoskeletal pain for millions of people.”