Why Now Is The Time For a Giant Leap: Introducing Aera

If you’ve spent any time around technology, you’ve probably heard the term “moonshot.” Its meaning is clear enough to anyone who sat through American history classes: the United States found itself on the back foot when the Soviet Union was the first to put a cosmonaut into space, and instead of trying to simply get a bit ahead of where the bar had been set, the U.S. reached for the moon—quite literally, in this case. They understood that trying to get slightly past the current marker would only leave them playing catch-up once more as the U.S.S.R. made its own advances.

The space race wasn’t just about competition, although it was a lot about competition; it was also about ambition. It mattered to get to the moon first, but what resonates decades later is that we dared to dream big, and through expertise, determination, and trial and error, we were able to do something beyond what past generations thought possible. 

We at WebPT haven’t built a rocket ship (despite my many suggestions), but what we’ve created embodies the moonshot spirit that has forever animated innovators. WebPT ushered in the EMR, so it’s fitting that WebPT in turn recognized that it was time to look towards what comes after the EMR. It would have been simpler to iterate, to try and create a more advanced version of what we have now, but it wouldn’t have been ambitious.  And because rehab therapists need more than the EMR is equipped to offer, it wouldn’t have been in line with our founding principle to help rehab therapists achieve greatness in practice. So, Aera was born. 

What is Aera, and how is it that much different than what’s otherwise offered with current versions of the EMR? Answering that question required big leaps elsewhere to make it all possible. What made the EMR great at its inception was its ability to bring together all the information that was once disparate into a single source; where once there were cabinets and desks with paper, now sat a single screen. But like any technology, it was limited by its time; information sat together within a single warehouse, so to speak, but that warehouse had walls around all the various sets of data. Eventually it became easier to fashion a system to pass data as needed, but the whole process was still disjointed. 

More than that, the EMR represents an increasingly obsolete way in which people interact with the systems that manage their day-to-day lives and work. We’ve all felt it in our lifetimes; it used to be amazing to be able to get information in a few minutes with a half-dozen clicks, an amount of time and effort that would prompt present-day versions of ourselves to toss our phones into the nearest dumpster.  We don’t want to click and sort and navigate across four or five screens for a simple answer; we want it to be available with a simple request, or ideally, offered up without even having to ask.   

Rehab therapists understand the need for faster answers better than most, but unlike the average Google search, there’s also an acute need for help from somewhere, anywhere, to keep pace with demands that overwhelm their time and mental capacity. We’ve always believed that the answer lies in having the right technology to handle everything the industry has to throw at practices, but the problem eventually became that the technology on hand was no longer the right one.    

Aera was built to simplify, streamline, and exist without barriers to knock down or work around. It’s built around AI’s ability to learn and intuit, understand your habits and tendencies, grasp exactly what you want from it, and act without being told. As a writer, it pains me to say that words can’t do it justice, but I’d definitely recommend you check out the Aera website to explore just what it can do. 

What does all that mean in practice (or in your practice, as it were)? It means that answers and actions are always right there; all you have to do is ask in a conversational interface that’s easily recognizable to anyone who’s used AI, or even just done a simple search. 

What makes the whole thing truly sing is the fact that all the data we talked about as being siloed and segmented is now unified and linked, forming the foundation of the entire platform. And with AI orchestrating the flow of information, it’s able to spot patterns and trends and highlight them for you, keep things moving along the typical workflow without staff having to worry about handoffs, and handle a lot of the basic work that’s time-consuming but doesn’t typically require the brainpower a practice can bring to bear.   

In short, it’s a completely new way to manage the work of running a practice—one that’s ready to keep pace with a profession speeding into an uncertain future.  It’s a rethinking of what’s possible not only for what the technology aiding rehab therapists can do for them, but what we really want from Aera is for it to be the thing that enables practices and practice owners to dream of what’s possible unburdened from admin—more providers, more services, more locations, or simply more time for staff and clinicians to look after themselves. 

You can see for yourself at meetaera.com.