Virtual care & chronic disease · Pulmonary rehabilitation
Kivo Health
Kivo Health ships a tablet, a Bluetooth pulse oximeter and a set of exercise bands to patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, then runs an eight to nine week pulmonary rehabilitation program over live video. Founded in San Francisco in 2021, it now has a peer reviewed outcomes study, a Y Combinator launch, and partnerships with Stanford Health Care and Optum Arcadia behind it.
A kit on the kitchen table
The box that arrives at a patient’s door holds a cellular connected tablet, a Bluetooth pulse oximeter, and a set of resistance bands. No Wi-Fi setup is required. Within a day the patient is on screen for a one on one intake with a respiratory therapist, according to the company.
Twice a week for eight or nine weeks, small groups of two to five patients join a live video session. A licensed respiratory therapist leads guided exercise and breathing technique while a pulse oximeter streams heart rate and oxygen saturation in real time. Sessions also cover inhaler technique, symptom recognition, and how to avoid a flare up that ends in the emergency room.
It is, in effect, a clinic rebuilt for a coffee table. The company calls the box the Kivo Kit.
The three percent problem
Pulmonary rehabilitation is not new or unproven. The American Thoracic Society’s 2023 clinical practice guideline recommends offering patients the choice of center based rehab or tele-rehabilitation, calling the evidence for tele-rehab moderate quality and the recommendation strong.
The problem the company has built itself around is access. Traditional pulmonary rehab requires driving to a clinic two or three times a week for eight weeks, a routine that is difficult for people who struggle to walk up a flight of stairs, and often impossible for patients in rural areas or without transportation. Kivo Health and its partners put the share of eligible patients who complete a program at roughly 3 percent, a figure the company, Stanford Health Care and the COPD Foundation have each repeated in press materials.
Chronic lung disease affects an estimated 16 million people in the United States, according to the company’s own launch materials. COPD alone affects more than 30 million Americans and is the fourth leading cause of death worldwide, according to a EurekAlert release describing the peer reviewed study discussed below.
A physician who saw the same patient twice
Kivo Health was co-founded in 2021 by Victor Sadauskas and Vaughn Koch. Sadauskas is an emergency medicine physician: public provider directories list him as a graduate of the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine in 2017, board certified in emergency medicine, holding an active California medical license, and affiliated with Kaiser Permanente Manteca Medical Center. The UCSF Rosenman Institute, an academic accelerator for physician founders that later wound down, described him as trained at the Stanford Emergency Medicine Residency, finishing in 2021. Koch is the company’s co-founder and chief technology officer; no independent record of his prior work was found.
The company was accepted into Y Combinator’s Winter 2023 batch and launched publicly in February 2023. In their own words on the company’s Y Combinator page, the founders framed the problem as one of access, not evidence.
In August 2023 the company announced a national partnership with the COPD Foundation, a nonprofit patient advocacy group, aimed at widening access to virtual pulmonary rehab.
From a peer reviewed study to a health system
In February 2025, a team led by researchers affiliated with UCLA published a retrospective review of 167 patients who completed Kivo Health’s virtual pulmonary rehab program between October 2022 and November 2023, comparing outcomes for patients who required supplemental oxygen against those who did not. The paper ran in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Diseases: Journal of the COPD Foundation, a peer reviewed, open access journal, and the COPD Foundation publicized the results in May 2025.
Four months later, in June 2025, Stanford Health Care announced a collaboration to bring the virtual program to its own COPD patients under a value based care framework. In December 2025, Priority Health, a nonprofit plan covering more than 1.3 million members in Michigan, partnered with the company for its Medicare, Medicaid and HIDE-SNP members. In April 2026, Optum Arcadia, part of Optum California’s medical group, launched a joint program combining its care model with Kivo’s platform for patients in California.
What is proven, and what is still claimed
| Evidence | What the record shows | Source type |
|---|---|---|
| Peer reviewed outcomes | Retrospective review of 167 patients (107 on oxygen, 60 not) enrolled Oct 2022 to Nov 2023. Median attendance 88 percent. Adverse events in 2 patients, about 1 percent. CAT, mMRC, PHQ-9 and sit-to-stand scores all improved significantly. Chronic Obstr Pulm Dis, Feb 2025, PMID 40037281. | Public record |
| Company reported outcomes | The company’s website cites 24 percent symptom improvement, 34 percent functional capacity gain, 25 percent mood improvement, 83 percent median attendance, and a 3.1x return on investment. The attendance figure differs from the 88 percent the peer reviewed study reports for the same program. | Differs from record |
| Referral network | The study’s conflict of interest statement confirms Kivo Health “frequently works with the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) patients who are referred by UCLA physicians.” Broader claims that UCSF, Cedars-Sinai and Novant Health also refer patients appear in only one secondary aggregator and were not independently confirmed. | Partly unverified |
| FDA record | No 510(k) or PMA filing found under Kivo Health. The company markets pulmonary rehabilitation as a clinician delivered service, not as a regulated device. | Not found |
| Registered clinical trial | No study for Kivo Health found on ClinicalTrials.gov. The published outcomes paper was a retrospective chart review, not a registered prospective trial. | Not found |
| Federal grants | No NIH or NSF award naming Kivo Health was found as of September 25, 2026. | Not found |
| Series A funding | Kivo Health’s Y Combinator page states the company “just raised our $10M Series A.” No Form D notice for Kivo Health appears on SEC EDGAR as of September 25, 2026, and a third party data aggregator, Tracxn, lists total funding of $500,000 from a single 2023 seed round. | Differs from record |
Read plainly: the clinical case is the strongest part of the record. A peer reviewed study found high attendance, a low complication rate, and functional gains that held up whether or not a patient needed oxygen. The commercial and financial claims are thinner: the company’s own attendance figure does not match the published study, and its stated Series A has no matching SEC filing.
What to watch
- Whether a Form D or other filing confirms the size and investors of the reported Series A.
- Whether Kivo Health publishes a larger, prospective follow up to the 167 patient study.
- Whether referral relationships beyond UCLA are confirmed in an independent source.
- How the Optum Arcadia and Priority Health partnerships perform once patient volume is reported.
In their words
“Pulmonary rehab is the gold standard for non-pharma treatment of COPD and other lung diseases. However, only 3% of eligible patients are getting this life-changing therapy, because they can’t access it: they live too far away from a rehab center, or just can’t get there in person without help. We founded Kivo Health to solve this access problem, by delivering rehab to patients over live video.”
Victor Sadauskas and Vaughn Koch, co-founders, Y Combinator company page, 2023 · Company
“Pulmonary rehabilitation can be life-changing for people with COPD, but most never complete traditional, in-person programs.”
Victor Sadauskas, MD, co-founder and CEO, Business Wire, April 2026 · Company
“We are thrilled to collaborate with Kivo Health to bring virtual pulmonary rehabilitation to our COPD patients.”
Leah Rosengaus, Senior Director of Digital Health, Stanford Health Care, Business Wire, June 2025 · Company release
“Virtual pulmonary rehabilitation allows for increased access to these programs, which benefit people with COPD, regardless of their supplemental oxygen use. In our study, 99% of participants participated safely without any adverse effect, and participants in both groups had improvements in clinical outcomes.”
Russell Buhr, MD, PhD, pulmonologist, UCLA, co-senior author, EurekAlert!, May 2025 · Independent
“For the more than 16 million people in the U.S. with COPD, pulmonary rehab can improve lung function, overall fitness, and quality of life better than any other therapy.”
Jean Wright, MD, CEO, COPD Foundation, press release, August 2023 · Independent
Related companies
Sources
- Public recordFilizola H, Kumar A, Buhr RG, Schwab Jensen K. Outcomes of virtual pulmonary rehabilitation in oxygen-dependent COPD patients
- Public recordHealthgrades provider listing, Victor Sadauskas, MD
- Public recordWebMD doctor profile, Victor Jonas Sadauskas
- Public recordSEC EDGAR full text search, “Kivo Health” (zero Form D results)
- Public recordForm D, Kivo, Inc. (CIK 0001917508), unrelated Portland, Oregon company
- IndependentVictor Sadauskas profile
- IndependentVirtual pulmonary rehabilitation programs are safe, effective for people with COPD
- IndependentVirtual Pulmonary Rehabilitation an Accessible Solution for Patients With COPD on Oxygen
- IndependentThe COPD Foundation and Kivo Health partner to make pulmonary rehab more accessible
- IndependentPriority Health partners with Kivo Health to deliver AI-powered virtual COPD care
- InvestorMassMutual Ventures portfolio page, Kivo Health
- Third party dataKivo Health funding rounds and investors
- CompanyKivo Health: AI-powered care for seniors with chronic disease
- CompanyOptum Arcadia and Kivo Health launch AI-powered, virtual lung rehab and care for patients in California
- CompanyStanford Health Care and Kivo Health collaborate to advance value based care for COPD through virtual pulmonary rehabilitation
- CompanyKivo Health homepage and physicians page
Profile researched and written by Healthcare Discovery. Last updated September 29, 2026.
