Immergo Labs

This past Monday, the Immergo Labs team had the incredible opportunity to collaborate with a diverse group of 20 stakeholders, including patients and clinicians from across the United States. Alongside our 8 Immergo product team leads, we gathered at the Fogarty Innovation Institute in Mountain View, California, for a full day of exploration in virtual reality.

Together, we experimented with current prototypes and brainstormed the future of the Immergo platform from both patient and clinician perspectives. Being people-first and human-centered is at the core of everything we do at Immergo, and we are so thankful to have worked with this amazing group.

A huge thank you to our dedicated stakeholders for your invaluable feedback, to Fogarty Innovation for supporting Immergo as a company in residence, and to the National Science Foundation (NSF) for the SBIR grant that made the R&D behind Immergo's core technologies possible.

UCSC alumni awarded large NSF grant to grow virtual reality physical rehabilitation startup Immergo Labs The National Science Foundation awarded three Baskin Engineering alumni with a $1,000,000 Small Business Innovation Research grant to support the research and development of an extended reality platform for full-body physical rehabilitation.

Exciting news! Immergo Labs, Inc. has been awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant for $1,000,000+ to conduct research and development (R&D) on creating a extended reality platform for full-body physical rehabilitation towards enhancing the affordability, accessibility, and accuracy of care.

See the press update here: https://www.immergolabs.com/post/immergo-labs-awarded-million-dollar-grant-for-virtual-reality-and-healthcare-research

Immergo Labs Awarded $1M NSF Grant for Virtual Reality and Healthcare Research Virtual Reality and healthcare startup Immergo Labs has been awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant for $1,000,000 to conduct research and development (R&D) work on creating a extended reality platform for physical rehabilitation towards enhancing...

We are excited to be demoing our platform at ! If you are around come see us at the New Children’s Museum from 6:30-8:00pm, try out our platform, and talk with some of the leaders in physical therapy tech that will be there.

By developing an immersive telehealth platform, Immergo Labs aims to address the challenges of time constraints and communication between physical therapists and their patients.

They are disrupting a $49 billion physical therapy market in the United States and plan to expand into markets outside the United States, such as Europe, Canada, and Mexico.

https://www.startengine.com/offering/immergolabs

Immergo Labs is taking physical therapy into the future of healthcare! 🩺
The COVID-19 epidemic has seen telehealth gain increasing popularity, as it allows patients to receive care without the risk of exposure.

Many healthcare providers have expanded their telehealth offerings, and its intrinsic versatility and flexibility mean that it is expected to continue its meteoric growth after the pandemic ends.

Learn more about our investment opportunities by visiting our raise page!
https://www.startengine.com/offering/immergolabs

There is 1 week left to sign up for our webinar on January 18th at 11:00 am PST.

At Immergo Labs, we are developing what is believed to be the world's first virtual reality telehealth platform for physical therapists. Using 3D avatars and artificial intelligence-generated measurements, our system connects telehealth practitioners to patients to evaluate movement and guide them through the therapeutic process.

https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_lG7dHYy2Q3iXij92BIaanA

As the thought-leader behind Immergo’s biomechanics technology, CEO Michael Ora Powell hopes to take his experience and develop tools to help others in their recovery process! 😊🙌

We created a virtual reality system that connects telehealth practitioners to patients using 3D avatars and AI-generated measurements. This allows them to remotely – and accurately – evaluate movement to guide patients.

Learn more below. 👇
http://bit.ly/3uR0RrM

Our software allows physical therapists to monitor patients remotely using virtual avatars – allowing for an extraordinarily high standard of care! More than mere observation, our simple VR setup also measures strength, balance, and range-of-motion metrics, all from the comfort of your own home.

You aren’t restricted to the virtual world: clinicians will have the ability to implement a hybrid model and offer remote visits as an extension of their in-person care. This will add a huge amount of flexibility for both clinicians and their patients!

Feel free to download our pitch deck for all the information you need about Immergo. 👇

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1fY_za9k2sN3vxqxbSutvVgPPeNFOQbVr/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=117623416547671517169&rtpof=true&sd=true

Co-founder and CSO Aviv Elor Awarded Titan of Tech!

We are extremely proud of our co-founder Aviv Elor for being awarded the Titan of Tech by Santa Cruz Works. This award celebrates the MVPs of the Monterey Bay area who have contributed to the growth of the local tech and entrepreneurial community. Aviv has helped other students and groups obtain fellowships and grant funding to develop impactful projects, collaborated with several local health programs and hospitals, led research groups at the University of California Santa Cruz, and helped improve the health of locals with his rehabilitation research just to name a few of the ways Aviv has had an impact.

Immergo originated in Santa Cruz, has received great support from the local community, and we hope to help other local startups on their journey.

Congratulations Aviv! We know you will continue to have a positive influence with your work.

https://engineering.ucsc.edu/news/baskin-engineering-alumnus-titan-of-tech/

We're excited to announce that we've joined Innovation!

Fogarty Innovation is a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing medical innovation that improves human health. We were competitively accepted into the FI Company Accelerator Program towards refining our strategies, building our team, and navigating the medtech path to commercialization. This program offers guidance from Fogarty Innovation’s engineers, directors, and entire C-suite. Immergo’s primary mentors will be Marga Ortigas-Wedekind (Chief Commercial Strategy Officer) who has a rich history in bringing new solutions to the market, including in digital health, and John Morriss (Director of Innovation Acceleration) who has extensive experience in business for product development.

We're thrilled and grateful to be joining this group with a proven track record of helping seed stage companies set and achieve critical growth milestones. The guidance and mentorship of this program will not only help with company success but increase access to physical rehabilitation for all!

More info here: https://www.fogartyinnovation.org/who-we-are/



Cruz Works @startup_montereybay

Exciting news for Immergo Labs - we have been selected for the
VentureWell ASPIRE Medtech Program! The program will take place over 5 weeks and we’ll be connected to industry experts for networking and mentoring opportunities as we continue to build our company. ASPIRE has helped 139+ startups like ours grow their companies and we are grateful for the opportunity to work with this great team! https://bit.ly/3TlY6sP

At Immergo Labs we believe that physical therapists should be involved throughout the design process. We want to make sure we are building the platform they are looking for. We asked two of our collaborating therapists to give their thoughts on Immergo and the use of virtual reality. We work with many physical therapists and throughout our campaign we will continue to post their feedback so you all can get an inside view.

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“Immergo has the potential to be a revolutionary tool. Its developers have taken great care in soliciting and incorporating the feedback of doctors of physical therapy into the platform's design from the ground up. This means that this technology has the potential to make the delivery of care more smooth and less burdensome for therapists in settings such as outpatient clinics where customer service is a major organizational value.

I believe that if Immergo continues to execute at this rate, their virtual platform will not only free a segment of the population from having to be physically present in the clinic, it will create that feeling of belongingness and care in a virtual environment. It will also be more congruent with the on-the-go lifestyle of the coming generations. While this may be a stretch for most of the boomer generation, generations that are digital natives will easily adopt this mode of care delivery. One of the major pain points that Immergo has the potential to address is the administrative hurdles of getting referred, scheduling, and attending a PT session.”

- Nima Tabloei - PT, DPT, MPH, CSCS, Board-certified specialist in neurologic physical therapy (NCS) - Orthopedic spine and neurologic

A marriage of virtual reality and physical therapy: Immergo Labs emerges from its UCSC roots The COVID-19 pandemic has uncorked the genie from the bottle on telehealth. UC Santa Cruz alums Aviv Elor, Ash Robbins and Michael Powell are bringing physical therapy to your home via their virtual reality telehealth platform, Immergo VR.

Redefining Telehealth for Physical Therapy, stay tuned….

On today's team feature, meet our user experience advisor Dr. Sri Kurniawan!

Sri is a Chair and Professor of Computational Media from , where she leads research and development of assistive technology to help people with special needs maintain a high quality of life as the Director of ASSIST Labs. Her research focuses on on the design and evaluation of interactive systems that help people with special needs, including older persons and people with disabilities, and more recently children.

Rather than designing interactive systems that only help increase productivity, she works on systems that are fun to use for these user groups and put people on equal footing with the rest of the world. Dr. Kurniawan also has more than 20 years of experience in human-centered design, research collaborations with companies such as Microsoft, IBM Accessibility Lab, and others. She has also worked in the oilfield as a field engineer and as a consultant for several startup companies.

More info on Sri can be found here: https://users.soe.ucsc.edu/~srikur/

On today's team feature, meet our strategy advisor Greg Gewickey!

Greg is a Strategic Advisor at providing technology & business strategy guidance for the team. He is a deep tech veteran who is specialized in driving technology strategy & innovation in several lines of business including digital cinema, streaming video, visual effects, themed entertainment & gaming. His past work included close collaboration with Time Warner Investment scouting technology companies, performing diligence and collaborating through prototypes.

Prior to to Immergo, he worked at Warner Bros, Deluxe, Disney, Sonic Solutions and InterActual all to drive innovation in media & entertainment. In earlier years, he developed consumer electronics at Philips Electronics including pioneering smart connected devices for the home. He started his career at IBM, working in enterprise computing and innovative technologies like pen computing and speech recognition.

More info on Greg can be found here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/greggewickey/

Did you know that was formed from 130+ interviews with physical rehabilitation professionals about therapy & telehealth?

As an academic spin-out startup from , the founding team of performed extensive interviews with physical therapists and patients both during and after the height of the COVID19 pandemic through the Innovation Corps Program.

More info here: https://static.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frvir.2022.915332/full

On today's team feature, meet our physical therapy advisor Dr. Sean Wells, DPT, OCS, ATC, CSCS, NSCA-CPT, CNPT, CertDN (). Dr. Wells is a Strategic Advisor at Immergo Labs providing physical therapy specific guidance for the team. Sean is also a board certified orthopedic specialist with licenses in physical therapy, athletic training, and certifications in strength and conditioning and dry needling. He has experience with teaching and research at Florida Gulf Coast University and University of North Florida. Currently he owns a private, cash-based physical therapy practice with multiple locations in Florida and offers online continuing education to physical therapists. When he's not reading journals, treating patients, or tinkering in you can find him on the beach surfing or playing soccer.

More info on Sean here: https://www.wellsphysicaltherapy.com/ -wells-physical-therapy

On today's team feature, meet our co-founder Michael Powell ()! Dr. Powell is the Chief Executive Officer at and leads biomechanical data development for our algorithm training. He has studied a variety of topics and his degrees include physics, kinesiology, exercise science, and computer engineering. During his Master's he designed and built an instrumented high speed treadmill to measure the ground reaction forces of elite level sprinters. His PhD research from with Aviv Elor and Ash Robbins helped lay the ground work for Immergo.

Dr. Powell also used to be a personal trainer and loved helping clients reach their goals, whether is was training for NFL combines or a people just looking to get healthier. He is excited to continue helping others improve their physical capabilities at Immergo Labs. In his free time he likes to read up on new topics and workout.

More info on Mike here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-ora-powell/

Lots of new developments at Immergo Labs from initial investments, strategic partnerships, and new metaverse physical therapy tools! Thank you to Santa Cruz Works for supporting our mission to enhance the movement of life!

More info here: https://www.santacruzworks.org/news/immergo-labs-secures-major-partnerships-and-initial-investors-to-support-physical-therapy-in-the-metaverse

Aviv Elor Ash Robbins Michael Powell Sean Wells Baskin Engineering at UC Santa Cruz

Immergo Labs Secures Major Partnerships and Investors — Santa Cruz Works VR-Based Physical Therapy Telehealth company, Immergo Labs, secures several major partnerships and initial investments.

On today's team feature, meet our co-founder Ash Robbins ()!

As Chief Technology Officer at Immergo Labs, Ash leads artificial intelligence design, manages cloud architecture integration, and ensures development meets technical validation. He has extensive development experience in machine learning and cloud computing from bio-inspired robotics to rehabilitation movement and modeling.

As our resident in-house mad scientist, he has previously worked on bio-inspired robot arms with adjustable dynamic properties and designing machine learning techniques with neural data from lab grown brains into complex cloud architectures. He is a leading expert on generalization in algorithmic design, using data driven approaches to quantify uncertainty. Robbins is currently a PhD Candidate at and upon graduation in 2023 he will pursue commercialization of Immergo's core technology full time. He's also a avid rock climber, hiker, and surfer. Outside of work, you can find Ash catching waves across West Cliff in Santa Cruz, California or rock climbing at nearby locations.

More info on Ash here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashrobbins/