Sword Health

Derrick Torba is a military veteran and Doctor of Physical Therapy at Sword. After a shoulder injury threatened his ability to deploy with the Air Force, physical therapy helped him return to what mattered most. Today, he delivers that same kind of impact to Sword members as a physical therapist himself. Derrick is one of hundreds of clinicians on our platform, and almost every one of them has a story like his: a personal mission that brought them to healthcare and the impact they always wanted at Sword. Discover their stories: https://lnkd.in/ex8im5dQ

MSK is a top cost driver for employers and health plans, and the traditional pathway often moves toward surgery before conservative care is tried first. One of the largest claims-validated studies of an MSK solution to date analyzed 59,000 matched Sword Thrive members across six years of claims data. The findings include: → 4x ROI on MSK spend → $3,262 in MSK savings per member per year → 72 fewer surgical encounters per 1,000 members → $720 in additional downstream Total Cost of Care savings per member per year Read the full report here: https://lnkd.in/ejGFdUNi

Hundreds of clinicians practice on the Sword platform. We asked them the same question: Why did you choose to work here? Their answers varied, but they all shared a common purpose: they talked about a grandparent, an injury, a moment that led them to healthcare, and changed the trajectory of their career. They told us about the kind of practice they always wanted, but the system never let them have - until now. For each of them, Sword makes a deeply personal mission possible. Hear it in their words.

People don’t experience health in separate lanes. A fertility appointment can affect anxiety → anxiety can disrupt sleep → sleep can impact recovery. And so on. Most healthcare systems treat these as separate journeys; Sword does not. Phoenix carries clinical memory across programs, so support can arrive with the context of what a member is going through, what is coming next, and what has helped before. Care that remembers you is care that works. This is AI Care in action.

Episode 3 of Impatient is now live. In this one, Josh Greenwald sits down with Brandon Sammut, Chief People & AI Transformation Officer at Zapier, for a conversation on leadership, organizational change, and the future of work. Drawing on Zapier's AI transformation journey, Brandon shares how culture drives adoption, and why the People function has a much bigger role to play than simply supporting change. Watch the episode, and subscribe to Impatient: YouTube: youtu.be/VtdGY6ymOe4 Spotify: https://lnkd.in/esXs84mq

Sword is partnering with Portugal’s National Health Service to make our AI MSK care solution available nationwide through the country’s public health system. Through this partnership, any SNS physician in Portugal will be able to prescribe Sword to Portuguese patients managing musculoskeletal conditions. For patients, this means being able to start treatment in a few days, from home, with continuous clinical supervision and real-time AI guidance that analyzes and corrects movement during each session. When we started Sword in Portugal, more than a decade ago, our mission was to make high-quality care accessible to more people. Since then, we have expanded globally, serving clients across +55 countries, treating close to one million members, delivering over 13 million AI Care sessions, and earning support from 58 peer-reviewed clinical studies. It's hard to think of a more full-circle moment for us. Read more in our newsroom: https://lnkd.in/ecNus6CB

While AI supports members day to day, clinicians are ready to step in the moment a situation calls for their judgment. Phoenix is trained to recognize potential clinical flags during a session, or across a member’s care journey. When that happens, it pauses, escalates, and brings the clinician into the same conversation the member was already having, with the relevant context attached and no disconnected handoff. From there, the clinician takes over the conversation and ensures care continues safely. This is the model we believe in: AI that is always present, and clinicians who are always within reach. Not one over the other; both working together to deliver world-class care.

Today, we're sharing a deeper technical look at how we built MindGuard, our open-source family of safety classifiers for mental health AI: https://lnkd.in/eqiUb66F. The core problem is simple: mental health conversations are full of emotionally intense language that isn't always a crisis signal. A good safety system needs to distinguish between distress, disclosure, metaphor, historical context, and imminent risk without interrupting care unnecessarily or missing the moments that require escalation. In the article, we show how smaller, task-specific classifiers can outperform much larger general-purpose safeguards when built for clinical context. MindGuard 4B and 8B outperformed models up to 30x their size, achieving lower false positives at high recall. In practice, that means fewer benign conversations treated like emergencies, while preserving the sensitivity needed to catch real risk. In mental health AI, safety cannot live in a generic moderation layer. It needs to understand clinical context, recognize when a conversation crosses into risk, and activate the right protocol at the right moment. That is the foundation behind MindGuard, and why we are making the model, taxonomy, dataset, and red-teaming framework open source.

What does it take to manage benefits at scale? Candace Jodice did it for 26 years at CVS Health and on June 25th she's sitting down with Jeannette Abbott to talk about it honestly. They'll cover: → How ROI expectations have shifted and what CFOs now consider meaningful proof → How to respond when a vendor isn't delivering or leadership demands consolidation → The priorities that separate great benefits leaders from average ones Live Q&A included. Register here: https://lnkd.in/etURJynN.

Episode 2 of Impatient is now live. Tune in for a candid conversation between our Chief People Officer, Josh Greenwald, and Michael D'Ambrose, former Fortune 50 CHRO and CEO, on the future of HR. Drawing on decades of experience, Mike shares why the best HR leaders are business leaders first, how the function can drive better business outcomes, and where AI could reshape talent and leadership development. Watch the episode, and subscribe to Impatient: Youtube: https://lnkd.in/ewNzDsX8 Spotify: https://lnkd.in/epG-5Ex2