Santa Cruz Works is excited to share some of the applicants who have applied to our Santa Cruz Accelerates Program. We will be featuring a handful of startups each week!

Name of your startup: SPHERE Therapeutics

Names of people on your team: Casey Olsen, Trevor Nomi

The problem your startup will solve to make the world a better place:

The National Safety Council (NSC) (https://injuryfacts.nsc.org) reported that the United States in 2019 incurred a cost of 171.0 billion dollars and 105 million days missed due to worker injuries. Studies vary in their analysis of the direct cost to organizations, but it is clear that this burden is carried disproportionately in certain high risk professions, mainly affecting blue collar workers as well as public service professions such as police officers. According to sanjoseca.gov, in 2018-19 the San Jose police department spent $8.9 million in direct workman's compensation payments for a staff of 1,691 officers. This is roughly $5,200 per officer per year! Workers in all professions often avoid filing claims until the problem is out of control. By the time they seek treatment, the average cost is $42,000 per injury - a statistic taken directly from National Safety Council.

SPHERE Therapeutics merges contemporary understanding of physical injuries, their causes, and current best orthopedic practices with emerging capabilities of data analysis, machine learning, and physical sciences to improve the physical health of workers and dramatically reduce the cost associated with injuries.

As a company, we offer two interwoven services through the use of a single software. The first is individualized interactive injury prevention for the individual. The second is the blinded aggregate data analysis allowing the organization or employer to gain insights, track trends, and project future costs.This technology is highly scalable and will get better in every way as it is implemented. We believe this will change the conversation around injuries in the workplace and will create knowledge and insights that will benefit many aspects of health in the future.

“Thomas A. Edison stated that ‘Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work’. We know that it won't be an easy path but we are excited and grateful to participate in SC Works 4th Cohort.” - Casey Olsen