Hinge Health, the maker of digital programs for chronic musculoskeletal (MSK) health, has closed $90 million in a new round led by Bessemer Venture Partners. Lead Edge Capital also took part in the Series C, as did prior backers Insight Partners, Atomico, 11.2 Capital, Quadrille Capital and Heuristic Capital.

Hinge had been courting investors throughout the course of the last quarter, and ultimately decided to turn away some of its courters, Daniel Perez, the company’s CEO and cofounder, told MobiHealthNews. With this, the company’s lifetime fundraising jumps to roughly $126 million.

WHAT THEY DO

The San Francisco-based company’s digital platform uses wearable sensors and one-on-one health coaching to deliver in-home MSK therapy. The programs are sold to to individuals and, more commonly, self-insured employers, Perez said, the latter of which benefits from integration tools, employee population-tailored campaigns and other tools designed to ensure an effective rollout.

According to Perez, these offerings have allowed Hinge Health to triple its customer base within the last six months. He said the company has completed more than 200 enterprise implementations, and is yet to lose a customer over the course of its five-year run.

“Over the past 18 months since our last funding, our team has quintupled in size, we’ve expanded our product offering to all major joints, offer our clients the ability to bill via all major health plans, published our [second and third] peer-reviewed studies (with our [fourth] on the way), and our customer base has grown 10x — and along the way we’ve maintained 100% customer retention,” he said.

Of note, Perez said that he views Hinge Health’s emphasis on peer-reviewed data as a major differentiator for the company’s clients. That embrace of evidence-based outcomes — alongside IT security — is an strategy that he said is unfortunately uncommon across the broad spectrum of digital health startups.

“I think there are a lot of claims that you’ll find that are being bandied out there by early-stage startups playing fast and loose with their claims, and that’s something that hurts the industry when that happens,” he said. “So we like to hold ourselves accountable to peer-reviewed research. … We’re certainly not the only one [that provides evidence], but unfortunately there are quite of few who don’t.”

WHAT IT’S FOR

Perez said that the company was able to hold off on organizing its latest funding round for several months due to “very strong” revenue and customer growth. But now, Hinge Health’s leaders believe that the time is right to dip into private equity so that the MSK company can expand its product lineup and workforce.

“Firstly, we’ll be doubling headcount over the next 12-18 months from over 200 today, to around 400,” Perez said. “Additionally, we’ll be investing heavily in product development and continuing to invest in our enterprise readiness, to ensure that buying Hinge Health remains not just the best choice from an outcomes perspective, but also the easy choice from an implementation perspective too.”

MARKET SNAPSHOT

While they might not have raised quite as much as Hinge Health, there are still a healthy number of digital platforms looking to either provide MSK and physical therapy care.

Just a couple of months ago saw Risalto Health bag $7 million more for its AI-enabled concierge service for patients seeking MSK health providers in their area. Around the same time, Reflexion Health kicked off a new version of its digital physical therapy platform, called HelloPT, that includes telehealth and recovery plan features. The preceding months also saw Kaia Health land $8 million for its digital therapy platform, and an $8 million round for MSK remote consultation app Physera.

ON THE RECORD

“US employers and health plans are looking not just for outcomes, but also meaningful engagement and — critically —  enterprise experience and maturity. That’s why we’ve invested in Hinge Health,” Steve Kraus, a partner at Bessemer Venture Partners who will be joining Hinge Health’s board, said in a statement. “Rarely have I seen customers more enthusiastic about a product. In all of my customer reference calls (and there were many), the praise for Hinge Health’s product and especially their ease of implementation was universal — which explains why they’ve never lost a customer.”