Launched Venture: Fern Health, a Digital Solution for Pain Management

Built by Grünenthal and BCG Digital Ventures, Fern Health helps patients reduce pain. We caught up with CEO Travis Bond to talk us through the solution and how it works.

Fern Health is a digital health company pioneering virtual musculoskeletal pain programs and pain neuroscience education through employers. Built by Grünenthal and BCG Digital Ventures, Fern Health helps patients reduce pain without surgery or the inappropriate use of opioids, from anywhere.

Recently, Fern Health announced the expansion of its collaboration with Massachusetts General Hospital, the largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School, and home to one of the world’s leading pain management clinics. We caught up with Fern Health CEO Travis Bond to talk about how Fern Health is helping patients and what’s in store for the future.

BCG Digital Ventures: What is Fern Health? What problem does it seek to solve?

Travis Bond: Fern Health is a digital program that addresses the source of chronic pain, not just the symptoms, offered as a benefits add-on through employers. Our first product addresses musculoskeletal (MSK) pain.

Pain is personal and complex. The gold standard of treating pain takes a ‘biopsychosocial’ approach, which includes restorative (exercise) therapy, pain neuroscience education (behavioral education), and health coaching (support and guidance). We help employers reduce MSK spend, and we help members (employees) break free from the limitations of pain without surgery or inappropriate use of opioids.

Our program is highly personalized across three main pillars:

• Restorative therapy gives Fern members easy-to-follow exercises to improve mobility and strength, and personalized modulations that adapt based on safety, engagement, satisfaction, perceived intensity, and outcomes.
• Pain neuroscience education through brain training and behavioral education helps Fern members reframe their pain perception for long-term recovery.
• 1:1 health coaching gives each Fern member a health coach to establish a therapeutic alliance, set goals, and identify any barriers. Our coaches provide personalized support based on fear or negative thought patterns around pain and help members monitor their progress and modify as needed.

We’re currently in pilot deployments with several mid-size and large employers and their employee members, spanning the professional services, manufacturing, and transportation sectors.

BCGDV: How does Fern Health rewire people’s brains to break free from the limitations of pain?

Travis Bond: Chronic pain impacts every part of life. You might avoid seeing friends or family members because you’re in too much pain, or feel distracted during your workday and not get as much done. Even though we know movement helps pain symptoms, when you’re living with chronic pain, a lot of the time your impulse is to rest — which, counterintuitively to many, makes pain worse.

Fern Health helps people get back to doing what they care about. As part of the intake process, Fern members set goals that are personally meaningful and motivating to them. In physical therapy, you might hear from your PT that you need to increase the rotation of your shoulder by 15%. But what does that really mean? A goal that’s based on real-life could be something like: I want to be able to pick up my kids, or I want to be able to play tennis again. Connecting Fern Health with those kinds of external motivators really helps increase engagement with the program and helps members see the benefit of taking part.

So as people go through our programs, we see them reaching these personalized goals, and see reductions in pain intensity. It was also important to us to make sure Fern Health addresses both the physical and psychological aspects of pain. Through pain neuroscience techniques, members also see reductions in anxiety and depression from the program.

Pain that is understood is not feared. We’re looking to change the way the brain wires itself around chronic pain, so people can get back to doing the things they love. Chronic pain causes changes in the brain that can be seen on diagnostic images like MRI scans. These changes impact emotions and pain sensitization that change behaviors and can lead to depression and anxiety.

BCGDV: What does the collaboration with Massachusetts General Hospital offer Fern Health?

Travis Bond: As part of our collaboration, we have access to data-driven insights derived from 10 million de-identified MGH patient records to inform personalization algorithms. In other words, we’ll be able to further personalize our program for members based on MGH’s data so they receive the best, proven pathway for them to combat their pain, based on their interactions with the program and their real-life experiences.

We’ll also work with MGH to develop and validate new services available to clinicians and healthcare systems in order to integrate Fern at the point of care. Clinicians will be able to electronically refer their patients to a digital plan to extend care beyond the clinical office visit.

We recognize that pain is not just limited to musculoskeletal; people suffer from pain associated with diabetes, cancer and so much more. We plan to scale across a number of disease states to address pain associated with other conditions through our continued collaboration with MGH.

For all of these projects, we’ll have ongoing access to MGH experts and clinical advisors across a variety of areas, including things like FDA approval as a digital therapeutic, hospital operations, payment and reimbursement models, information security, and the like.

BCGDV: What was the process in building Fern Health?

Travis Bond: BCG Digital Ventures worked closely with leading pain experts at Massachusetts General Hospital to develop clinically proven protocols for Fern Health. We wanted to create a digital program for chronic musculoskeletal pain that would be convenient and effective, and a positive experience for the user, too. We also knew that we would address both the physical and psychological sides of chronic pain, which you typically can’t get from a single provider. Our first program was for low back pain, and we’ve since added hip, knee, shoulder, and neck protocols.

BCGDV: How does Fern Health leverage artificial intelligence?

Travis Bond: Our digital pain management program driven by artificial intelligence adjusts based on a member’s goal, inputs like mental state around pain, responses to different exercises, and what types of content you spend the most time engaging with.

In order for a personalized program like ours to be most effective, it needs to include a ton of data on what’s worked in the past. That’s where the de-identified health records come into play. Since MGH is one of the leading hospitals for pain management, we know these records are rich in information about the optimal pain management pathways for people with similar histories.

BCGDV: What are the company’s plans for the future?

Travis Bond: In addition to our data projects, we are working with MGH to develop and validate new services available to clinicians and healthcare systems to integrate Fern at the point of care. Clinicians will be able to electronically refer their patients to a digital plan to extend care beyond the clinical office visit.

We also plan to expand beyond musculoskeletal pain to address pain associated with other conditions through our continued collaboration with MGH.

We believe that Fern and MGH will extend our collaboration to include successful delivery of FDA-approved digital therapeutics, and peer reviewed studies in the field of virtual care for pain.

Everything we’re doing is to more deeply understand human behavior as it relates to pain. By combining MGH’s enormous real-world clinical data with Fern’s digital solution, we have the ability to unlock the mystery of how millions of people have suffered from pain to help reduce the suffering of millions more to come.

Fern Health’s digital program, available through employers, addresses the source of chronic back and joint pain, not just the symptoms. Fern’s biopsychosocial approach includes restorative therapy, pain neuroscience education, and health coaching to get members feeling better without surgery or inappropriate use of opioids.

Grünenthal is a science-driven global leader in pain management with a decades-long track record of delivering solutions to pain patients worldwide.

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