Our story
Why I built HepBuddy
My mom wanted to go dancing. She wanted to hike Mt. Rainier when she came to visit. Her knee wouldn’t let her.
My mom’s knee started giving out, so she went to physical therapy. (My brother and I both used to have bad knees.) Standing in the clinic, she turned to me and said, “You better remind me to do these exercises.” That was the whole problem in one sentence. She didn’t need a better app. She needed someone who cared to be there with her.
I pulled up her HEP from MedBridge to see what she was supposed to be doing. It was a web portal: a list of exercises and when to do them. A step up, I guess. But it was so easy to ignore. There was a tiny “log activity” button in the corner, but nobody is going to dig through their email, find the link, open the portal, and log their reps unprompted. No reminders. No accountability. No wonder rehab adherence is abysmal everywhere.
So the day she got home, I started building HepBuddy. No fancy PT dashboard. Just her exercises, ready to follow along with. On her scheduled day, a link shows up in her message inbox. She taps it and follows along. When she’s done, I get a text telling me how she did. I became her accountability, and she started showing up for her rehab.
HepBuddy exists to get people back to the life their bodies are keeping them from.