TruFit hopes partnerships with health plans can increase access
New Mexico Inno, by Jacob Maranda. Published December 01, 2022
Nearly five months after launching an app that provides workouts for people with disabilities TruFit is close to securing contracts with health insurance companies to promote more equitable access.
The iOS and Android smartphone apps provide “fitness solutions” for people with intellectual, developmental and physical disabilities, said Adam White, the cofounder and CEO of the Albuquerque business. The app creates custom workouts based on the user’s individual characteristics and features a built-in social network between athletes and coaches, he said
The company is working on a web-based app, too, in order to improve accessibility, White added.
Landing contracts with health insurance companies is part of the effort to improve accessibility, White said. That way people who want to use the app wouldn’t have to pay for it out-of-pocket. Rather, their insurance would cover the app’s cost, which currently sits at $10 per month for a subscription.
TruFit is also working on pilot programs to deploy workouts featured on the app in schools and with physical and occupational therapists. Groups in school or during therapy sessions could use the app to guide in-person workouts, White explained.
“I think there’s a really important niche that needs to be filled in terms of the health and wellness inequities that are experienced by people with disabilities,” White said. “There are very few options out there for [people with disabilities] that are specifically designed for them or focused on that community.”
Earlier this fall, the company signed a contract with Marion Street Capital, a Philadelphia-based management consulting firm that has an office in Santa Fe. White said Marion Street will help TruFit expand its network of potential investors and hopefully raise more capital. The company is currently in the middle of a funding round that has a target of $1 million. The money would go toward software development and user interface design upgrades, White said.
Alongside Marion Street, TruFit recently signed a contract with CreativeFuse, a digital marketing agency based in Dayton, Ohio, to further promote the app, White said.
Besides expanding through health insurance contracts and pilot programs with schools or therapists, White has other goals for the app in 2023.
One is expanding the app’s reward program. Athletes would earn rewards like sports equipment for completing certain workout goals. Or athletes could earn free tickets to New Mexico United soccer games through the rewards program. White said that TruFit is “already piloting that” with the team and The Somos United Foundation, a sport and community development nonprofit under New Mexico United.
The White brothers began exploring the idea of a mobile app in early 2019. The company was founded in 2010 as a business to bring training systems to families, according to previous Albuquerque Business First reporting.
But the app is where the company has really taken off, White said, and landing contracts with health insurance companies could be the most monumental step to achieve White’s goal of improving health and wellness equity for everyone.
“We’re trying to even eliminate that by getting into as many health insurance companies as a value-added service as we can,” White said about the app’s current $10 per month cost. “Therefore then there’s no out-of-pocket cost for the athlete. Ideally, we’re going to have the insurance companies pay for this. That’s our ultimate goal.”
