MedTech is an evolving market and has given rise to several companies over the years. Sustainability lies in innovation. It becomes your job to provide your clients with something that has never been heard of or done. And when you enter a market space that is pretty new, you have abundant opportunities to do so!
Taking advantage of these opportunities, Simone Binda with his two partners founded WINTECARE.
WINTECARE is the first international network for physiotherapy that helps therapists to become leaders in their working field/working environment: Their value proposition is based on three pillars:
- Physical therapy device in-house designed to enhance manual skills and experience;
- Personalized training;
- A community of therapists from all over the world helping each other to keep-up with their skills;
We support therapists to express their full potential in order to obtain the best possible clinical result with each of their patients.
WINTECARE is based in Switzerland with a global team.
Cutting Through the Complexity-
The biggest challenge the team faced was to build up enough credibility around their new brand to become a point of reference within the rehabilitation industry in the shortest time possible with a reasonable budget. WINTECARE is a relatively new brand made of a small team but in 5 years they were able to consolidate relationships with huge enterprises and highly demanding organizations.
What they do supporting Nike athletes around the world is a good example but they also have some good connections in soccer being for instance official supplier of Manchester City FC and providers of many other important clubs and franchisee. They have clients even within the NBA
The reason why WINTECARE is able to gain progressively new room in the markets is that each new client of theirs recognizes in the people of the team a specific knowledge which he didn’t find elsewhere. The team is now running a digitalization project aimed at making their team’s know-how available on-line. This is a key factor to scale the business which – so far – has been pretty much related to physical presence.
Nothing Succeeds Like Success!
Technology changes rapidly and it is becoming more and more difficult to maintain a competitive advantage just based on one patent or on a “once-in-a-while innovation”. As long as their technology remains a booster of people skills and as long as they will be able to feed those skills, WINTECARE will be perceived as different from other Physical-therapy technology providers.
WINTECARE sells their technologies in 3 continents: Europe, Asia and America; they were among the TOP20 European Solution Provider in 2018 according to MedTech magazine; they cooperate with 3 universities in Switzerland and Spain for their research projects; the firm counts around 6 million views every year on their social media; the team attends dozens of international events each year including: World Athletics Championships, Scientific Conferences and Olympics; Hundreds of sports teams and athletes use their technologies including Serie A, Premier League, NBA, Turkish Super Lig and LaLiga teams; they cooperate with Over 50 international lecturers to produce relevant contents to the clients.
The Products and Services-
WINTECARE is focused on two types of physical therapy devices: focal vibration and electromagnetic-energy-transfer which respectively act on the neuromuscular system and on the peripheral circulatory system. With respect to training courses they are focused on three main fields: rehabilitation, performance and body conditioning. More precisely:
- V-Plus (focal vibration) is just 4kg, can apply 150% of the force applied by other similar devices and it is practically silent. These features together provide huge benefits in terms of versatility, transportability and even more important effectiveness.Normally focal vibration devices weights 50 kilograms, they are noisy and pretty difficult to apply;
- T-Plus (energy transfer) is the most powerful device within the market in terms of actual energy that can be transferred to the body tissues without side effects for the patient. In few words it allows to transfer the highest amount of energy within the time-unit without skin overheat and rebound effects (pretty common in other devices of the same category). This feature reduces the amount of time needed to achieve those body responses needed by the therapist to reach good clinical results.
- WINTECARE’S training is different because it is tailor made for the client. At the same time they can share know how from a team of over 50 lecturers worldwide which are interconnected with their clients through their networking events (offline and online).
WINTECARE has three sources of information for product development:
- Systematic Review of scientific bibliography,
- clinical data gathering towards key clients using their products,
- An internal research lab for product-concept testing.
Once they are able to identify a solution that (potentially) can improve clinical results in a field of interest they check the idea within their network, they test the product concept in the lab and – if everything fits expectations – the team starts with the product development process which normally takes 18 months.
The team is working to reduce their time-to-market to 12 months but having to deal with strict medical certification processes it is not a task relying just on their efficiency. Market changes are happening more and more often and pushing companies to adapt regulations take time to follow.
Innovation is the Key-
V-Plus is WINTECARE’S latest innovations. It shall be available starting from October 2020. They have recently received the final certification as medical product class IIA and have just started promoting it. It is a break-through innovation within the focal vibration category. This technology has a huge potential when dealing with any kind of neuromuscular disorders where the capacity to “train” the communication between the brain and the peripheral nervous system is required.
Our journey has just begun and we are still so far from what we would like to become.
In few minutes of application V-Plus allows the central nervous system to acquire better control of each motor-unit potentially available within the targeted muscle group. In the short term it provides significant effects for better muscle control, strength and power. In the long terms it helps in dealing with the rehabilitation after serious neuromuscular diseases and traumatic events. Post-surgery, post-ictus, rehabilitation after partial spine damage are among the fields of application. Within the Sport environment, V-Plus improves training results and can be used to increase training loads.
The Work Culture-
“Team building is our first big achievement.”
In these years WINTECARE has brought together a team of international professionals who -within their fields- can compete successfully in terms of clinical results with any “guru” available worldwide. Physical therapy vs chiropractor is a common discourse when it comes to rehabilitation. The company has brought an advanced alternative for sufferers by combining innovation with physical therapy.
