Exclusive: Exakt Health launches certified physiotherapy app

The founders both come from N26. The app will initially focus primarily on sports injuries. Exakt Health has already secured half a million US dollars.

Philip Billaudelle and Lucia Payo left N26 and founded their own company in January: Their start-up Exakt Health is dedicated to digital physiotherapy for sports injuries, and the Berliners raised half a million US dollars with this concept back in January. Now the start-up is launching its app, which is available for Android and IOS and has already been certified as Software-as-a-Medical Device by the European Medical Device Directive. This means that the app is available everywhere in the European Union and the UK.

"Physiotherapy should not be a luxury good. We give users direct access to information and tools for their recovery, exactly when they need them," explains Maryke Louw, who supports Exakt Health as a senior physiotherapist. The free app offers users a personalized therapy plan that includes exercises and recommendations. At the moment, the focus is on typical sports injuries such as an Achilles tendon injury from running.

Exakt Health will soon be launching a pilot study to validate the effects of the app. This is also required in order to be included in the directory of digital health applications in Germany and to be prescribed by prescription. The process for this takes an average of three months, and Exakt Health announced in March that it would also be pursuing this goal. The company also wants to expand the app's offering.

"The search for reliable medical information on the internet is frustrating because too often you don't find any suitable or contradictory opinions," says founder and CEO Billaudelle, explaining the motivation for founding the company. Billaudelle knows a thing or two about digitalization; at N26, he worked in product management and in the data science team, among other things, and he recently revealed his tips for remote work to Startbase. His co-founder Payo was a senior software developer at N26 for four years. In January, N26 co-founder Maximilian Tayenthal, Kelly Fors, former CMO at N26, and other business angels invested in the start-up.