Transforming Movement Health with Kinotek
Kinotek, a movement analysis company that helps physical therapists, chiropractors, and sports medicine professionals better understand human movement, was founded so that all humans can have better movement health. Kinotek uses AI and computer vision technology to map dynamic human movement in 3D and is focusing on healthcare, sports, and fitness markets. The company has raised $3.5 million in two rounds of venture capital funding, including investment from our Lake Nona Fund. A few months before the one-year anniversary of the launch of Kinotek’s inaugural product, CEO Pat Panaia discusses her role in guiding the company through its next phase of growth.
As a seasoned entrepreneur and experienced executive, what about Kinotek as a company stood out to you before joining the team?
I first met the team in 2020 and immediately understood the potential. I had spent 30 years in animal health bringing innovative technologies to veterinarians. Anytime you can make a process faster, easier, and with more objective data, it’s a win. Coincidentally, at the time I had my own knee pain that wouldn’t go away. Also, I was taken by the team’s optimism, persistence, and biomechanical engineering skills. When you combine an unmet market need with a team willing to work hard to find the right solution, it’s a formula for success. I made my first investment in 2020 and began helping the company on a regular basis in 2021. I became CEO in 2022.
Having worked in the veterinary industry, what parallels can you draw between working in human health and your experience in animal health?
Kinotek’s core customers, physical therapists, chiropractors, athletic trainers, and fitness professionals, are very much like veterinarians! They are hardworking, dedicated, and genuinely nice people who don’t always get the credit they deserve for their impact. Their business model is a challenge. Like veterinary practices, the market for physical therapy practices is consolidating. When I first started in animal health with a company called IDEXX, there was not a fast and easy way to do diagnostic bloodwork patient-side. This is exactly the situation today with Kinotek. Its users need a fast, easy, objective, and affordable way to measure movement health. Something better than their current plastic protractor (called a goniometer) and professional eye. Given all these similarities, I find opportunities every day to share my experience with animal health.
Kinotek’s mission is to give every human access to better movement health. What is Kinotek doing to make movement health accessible?
As mentioned, movement professionals face a very large problem: their primary affordable tool used to measure movement health is a plastic protractor called a goniometer. More sophisticated systems, until now, have been too expensive, complicated, and inaccessible. The goniometer is highly subjective, requires manual documentation, and is limited in what it can measure. Kinotek changes all this. Now you can get a sophisticated, objective, and comprehensive measurement of dynamic movement metrics in a way that is fast, easy, portable, and affordable. Plus, Kinotek assembles millions of data points, opening the door for data aggregation and advanced insights. The opportunity to reach millions of humans with better metrics leading to better outcomes is enormous and exciting!
What impact do you envision Kinotek will have made the health tech space in 5 years?
Today, 50% of Americans over 18 report some musculoskeletal dysfunction. And, there is gathering momentum in the medical field that movement itself is a biomarker, a vital sign, of health. When Kinotek can become the new, objective, and consistent gold standard for human movement measurement, we have the opportunity to impact humans globally. Our platform is scalable such that we can become that gold standard in 5 years.
What do you see as the most important factor that leads to innovation within the sports/health tech industry?
I once saw a talk by author Charles Duhigg about creativity. He told the story of choreographer Jerome Robbins and the development of the innovative musical West Side Story. As most people know, the story is about New York gangs. The genius of Robbins’ work was that he brought to this story his background and deep interest in classical ballet, his obsession with dime store novels, and his love of Shakespeare among many, many other interests. Duhigg calls him an “innovation broker” – someone who can piece together different ideas from completely different fields. So if you’ve seen the opening of West Side Story, you see New York gang members performing essentially ballet! Having a wide range of curiosities across many, many fields, I believe, is the key to any innovation. When we were in beta last year, we got feedback that testers were confused by our data presentation. After spending 20 years in veterinary diagnostics, I asked the team if we could present “movement metrics” like bloodwork. We could, we did, and it worked! So the most important factors for innovation? Be wildly and widely curious about a whole lot of different things and people, read a lot, meet different people, and be open to learning new things. Be an innovation broker to bring ideas together. Oh, and never give up (there’s that hard work again!).
To learn more about Kintoek, check out their recent features in Men’s Health and Mainebiz.
