Sparta Science and Munich Re North America Life Partner to Improve Employee Wellness by Reducing Risk of Musculoskeletal Injury

• Under the agreement, Munich Re now endorses Sparta Science’s Movement Health Platform to the North American disability carriers it reinsures
• Initiative aimed at reducing musculoskeletal injury and disease — the leading cause of disability claims — and preventing functional injury and decline before they lead to disability claims and lost productivity

MENLO PARK, Calif. and NEW YORK, May 17, 2022 — PRNewswire — Sparta Science and Munich Re Life North America (Munich Re) today announced they have entered into a strategic partnership aimed at reducing the occurrence of musculoskeletal (MSK) injury claims. With this partnership, Munich Re will offer disability insurance carriers in the U.S. and Canada direct access to Sparta Science’s breakthrough Movement Health Platform as part of its insurance advisory services.

Sparta Science’s Movement Health Platform is used to predict risk and provide insights that help prevent functional injury and decline before it leads to disability claims and lost worker productivity. Sparta Science’s scientific model provides early indicators for the risk of MSK injury in the way that a blood test would identify the risk for diabetes. By partnering to bring the Movement Health Platform to more disability insurance carriers, Sparta Science and Munich Re strive to decrease the probability of injury recurrence and the cost associated with employee absenteeism — all of which benefit employees, their employers and disability insurance carriers.

Benefits of the partnership for disability insurance carriers include:

• Access to Sparta Science and their dedicated team of experts for seamless program implementation and adoption
• Access to Munich Re’s group and individual disability expertise and disability-focused consultation services
• Cost savings in the initial production and program deployment

“A longtime leader in group and individual disability reinsurance, Munich Re actively pursues ground-breaking technology to help our clients control costs and enhance their customer experience;” said Dawn McMaster, Head of Business Development, Group and Living Benefits at Munich Re Life US. “While we are best known for our risk and reinsurance work with primary carriers, this partnership is a prime example of the array of digital partnerships and market-leading services we offer to our wide-ranging client base.”

Munich Re, a leading life reinsurer, works with insurance carriers in the midst of digital transformations by assisting them in such activities as:

• Providing digital tools that can integrate into a carrier’s existing workflows
• Driving data analytics projects that can help reduce costs and pilot technology partnerships
• Identifying and deploying advanced tools that can help reduce risk and claim reserves

“Today’s assessments of musculoskeletal injury are either non-existent or based on very subjective tests. The Oxford Scale, for example, is still used today and involves an individual pushing against a physician’s hand, allowing the physician to subjectively assign a rating for the pain or injury,” says Dr. Phil Wagner, Founder, and CEO of Sparta Science. “Sparta Science not only removes the subjective nature of these assessments to provide a more accurate evaluation but also aims to help prevent musculoskeletal injuries in the first place by identifying areas of weakness and limitation before pain or injury occurs.”

Sparta Science’s innovative Movement Health Platform is applied on a rapid and massive scale to provide assessments and insights that help reduce risk. Individualized data is gathered through a simple, two-minute scan using a high-fidelity force plate, which collects over 3000 data points per second. Sparta Cloud, a web application that leverages a database containing millions of assessments tied to tens of thousands of anonymized profiles, applies broad demographic data to objectively quantify risk for the individual. 

About Sparta Science 

Sparta Science was founded with the vision that everybody should be able to move freely, without physical limitations, for as long as possible. Since bringing on our first customer in 2014, we’ve grown into a global full-stack movement health platform. Trusted by organizations spanning the healthcare, government, and sports industries, our platform empowers organizations to provide a better standard of care. Today, we’re ruthlessly focused on studying human movement and creating innovative ways to measure, monitor, and improve movement health.

About Munich Re

Munich Re is one of the world’s leading providers of reinsurance, primary insurance, and insurance-related risk solutions. The group consists of the reinsurance and ERGO business segments, as well as the asset management company MEAG.

Munich Re is globally active and operates in all lines of the insurance business. Since it was founded in 1880, Munich Re has been known for its unrivaled risk-related expertise and its sound financial position. It offers customers financial protection when faced with exceptional levels of damage – from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake through to the 2019 Pacific typhoon season.

Munich Re possesses outstanding innovative strength, which enables it to also provide coverage for extraordinary risks such as rocket launches, renewable energies, or cyberattacks. The company is playing a key role in driving forward the digital transformation of the insurance industry, and in doing so has further expanded its ability to assess risks and the range of services that it offers. Its tailor-made solutions and close proximity to its customers make Munich Re one of the world’s most sought-after risk partners for businesses, institutions, and private individuals.