Company Profile:
Alvio
Alvio gamifies asthma exercises so your child can breathe easier. Over 1 billion people worldwide have some kind of breathing difficulty — for about half, that’s asthma, one of the most common chronic conditions there is. Studies have shown that by tracking a child’s asthma symptoms to identify their triggers and training their lungs, parents can reduce their child’s need for inhalers up to 86 percent. Alvio enables children and parents to do this at home because it connects with any iOS or Android Smartphone or tablet. By turning breathing exercises into games, Alvio engages kids so they stick with it. Alvio provides parents with reporting on their child’s progress and can even send alerts if the child’s symptoms seem to be getting worse, so parents can intervene. QoL is participating in clinical studies and hospital trials to adapt the technology to patients suffering from a variety of other respiratory ailments such as COPD and to help people recovering from surgery. Our mission is to help millions of people, especially kids, breathe a little easier.
Q: Five years from now, what would you like to be able to say has been your most important contribution to health?
A:
In five years we would like to be able to say that we improved the respiratory health of millions of people, reducing their need for medication and hospital visits while also reducing costs to the health care system.
Q: What single word or phrase best describes the culture of your startup and why?
A: The Alvio team combines skills from many different disciplines but we are all focused on the same goal: improving the lives of those touched by respiratory diseases like asthma.
Q: Please tell us how your business idea was conceived. Was there an "aha" moment or did it evolve gradually?
A: I visited a friend in the hospital following an operation. He had been given a device to restore his lung health but was not using it, even though he knew it was critical to his recovery, because it was difficult and boring. At that moment I realized that there must be a better way and the Alvio concept was born.
Q: What's the most inventive, innovative, or disruptive aspect of your initiative?
A: The games and activities we’ve designed engage patients so they can follow prescribed respiratory therapy regimens on their own and in their own home. However, since data is collected automatically, the Alvio system allows their physicians to monitor their progress in a much more efficient way. This combination allows for better and more personalized care to be administered to patients at a much lower cost.
Q: How will it help people live to their greatest potential or contribute to making the world healthier?
A: Our company is called QoL Devices, which stands for “Quality of Life”. When you have difficulty breathing, your quality of life is greatly diminished. Our mission is to help improve the quality of life of the over 50 million Americans and 1 billion people worldwide that suffer from respiratory challenges by allowing them to breathe easier.