LOOKING BACK, MOVING FORWARD: REFLECTIONS ON 2021

For many people, 2021 was simply an extension of 2020— more of the COVID-19 pandemic, more of the uncertainty, more of the burnout. But to SpellBound founder and CEO Christina York, 2021 was a hallmark year: 

“2021 was the year of proof: proving that we could live in a pandemic, proving that we could persevere in a severely strained healthcare market, and proving that mobile technology will be the future for patient engagement and experience.”

For the healthcare companies removed from the frontlines of the pandemic, 2020 saw a mad scramble of innovation as the best and brightest sought to create tools to help the struggling frontline hospitals and care teams. In contrast, 2021 was all about follow-through, resilience, and market validation: certainly less glamorous, but necessary as the pandemic continued to reach new heights. 

“The pandemic has taught us a lot as a company and as a member of the healthcare community,” says York. “We’ve learned how to value self-care and care for others and we’ve seen how mobility fits into this practice of care. Whether we ourselves are staying active or we are helping patients move sooner after a surgery, there is never a time that movement isn’t important.”

In a country where a whopping 1 in 5 healthcare workers have recently quit and 80% are feeling the effects of staffing shortages, the up-and-coming generation of healthcare tech needs to work harder than ever to support frontline workers and reduce overburdening. It’s no longer enough to have a tool that’s effective for patients— it needs to be efficient for care teams as well. 

“It is a testament to the power of play and the importance of mobility that ARISE could go to market and be adopted during a global pandemic.”

At SpellBound, we have been honored to work with care teams who have outlined their needs and also their constraints in order to help us optimize ARISE for today’s hyper-stressed healthcare institutions. CEO York notes that the pandemic may have forced stricter prioritization of mobility, due to its impact on load-reducing metrics like patient turnover and length-of-stay. 

“It is a testament to the power of play and the importance of mobility that ARISE could go to market and be adopted during a global pandemic,” says York. “And it is a testament to the importance of pain management and mobility that the NIH is backing small technology companies like SpellBound that are improving patient outcomes while reducing burden on already stretched hospital staff.”

2021 saw the completion of Phase I of SpellBound’s NIH-backed study to investigate ARISE’s effect on post-surgical opioid consumption, with the Phase II clinical trial on the horizon in early 2022. Our clinical partners, MD Anderson Cancer Center and Texas Children’s Hospital, make up two of the dozen hospitals across the US and Canada currently using ARISE to transform pediatric patient mobility. 

“We look forward to more positive transformation in healthcare in 2022,” says York.