Recap: Healthcare Wayfinders Podcast Interview
Healthcare Wayfinders Podcast Interview
Téa Phillips, Inventor of the MetaFlex Glove
Listen to the podcast on Apple, Spotify
Zach Aiden: Welcome back to the Healthcare Wayfinders podcast where we are routing you to more accessible and cost effective healthcare. I'm your host, Zach Ayton, and in today's episode, it's all about innovation that empowers.
My guest is Téa Phillips, the inventor of the MetaFlex Glove, an FDA-cleared drug-free device designed to help people manage arthritis, carpal tunnel, and hand pain from everyday overuse. Born from a personal mission to help her grandmother, Téa turned an engineering school project into a powerful tool now used by thousands, including hand surgeons, veterans, and everyday people looking for relief without expensive therapy or medications.
In this episode, you'll hear how the MetaFlex glove combines compression, resistance, and stretching to promote healing and restore strength in your hands, all while fitting seamlessly into your routine. We also dive into Téa's entrepreneurial journey and how she bootstrapped her way to FDA approval and what it really takes to launch a medical device that changes lives.
If you're searching for a natural, affordable hand pain relief or a powerful story of purpose-driven innovation, stick around. This one is for you. Let's get into it.
Meet Téa Phillips
Zach Aiden: Hey everyone and welcome back to the healthcare way finders podcast. This is Zach Aiden, your host. And today I have Téa Phillips as a guest on the podcast. She is the inventor of the MetaFlex gloves. And I'm super excited for you guys to get to hear her and her story and the amazing work that she's doing in healthcare. Téa, welcome to the show. How are you doing today?
Téa Phillips: Thank you, Zach. I'm doing well. Happy to be here.
Zach Aiden: Awesome. We were talking a little bit before recording that big part of our sort of ethos at grassroots labs and on the healthcare wayfarmers podcast is about making healthcare more affordable and accessible. And I know that's super important to you. You want to give us a little bit backstory about you and how you introduce us to the MetaFlex gloves and how they're making healthcare more affordable and accessible for folks.
The Story Behind MetaFlex
Téa Phillips: Yeah, absolutely. So I'm Téa. I am the founder of ATS innovations and the inventor of the MetaFlex gloves. This is MetaFlex for those on video.
The idea goes back to finding that many people have arthritis. Many people can't afford to go to the doctor or a therapist regularly, whether that's because they can't afford to take time off work or the copay or the bill you get after you visit is too high.
So we wanted to make a way for people to manage their arthritis at home affordably upon doing some research and finding holistic ways to manage arthritis. So not including like opioids or Tylenol. People chronically take opioids for this kind of condition because it's so painful.
But one of the ways that you can relieve pain holistically is compression. Another is grip strengthening. So when you're strengthening the muscles, then you're not putting as much pressure on the joints when you're using your hands. So it's good to strengthen. It's good to compress. It's good to stretch.
So we made the MetaFlex glove, which is a compression glove that has resistance bands sewn into the fingers for the purpose of extending the fingers. And each of those bands is adjustable for the level of resistance or the level of pull you want on your fingers.
So it's super customizable for whatever, for every single hand. And we have a range of sizes too. But the idea is as you're going about your day, you've got that gentle compression. You're also strengthening when you're in motion, you're stretching when you're at rest and just working to improve your hand mobility and function and reduce pain and use everywhere day and night.
For the purposes of arthritis, carpal tunnel, trigger finger, and it's really affordable.
How It Works - Strength Training for Your Hands
Zach Aiden: It's really cool. And you'll have to forgive me because I'm totally ignorant when it comes to arthritis and stuff like that. Is this something like, can you get back like feeling and strength and ability, I guess I would say, if you're like using this, is this kind of like strength training where you can improve like your experience over time?
Téa Phillips: Yeah, it is like strength training. So it's strength training without the gym and strength training without having to remember to do 15 reps a day on each hand, squeezing something. You wear the glove and you go about your day and you're doing that strength training, but you're also getting the benefits of the compression for muscle recovery and improve circulation to reduce like swelling and stiffness and of course pain. And then also the stretching.
One of the things that I found is that maybe half of our users are sleeping in the MetaFlex gloves and they're doing it to prevent waking up with their hand closed and stiff. Imagine you're waking up in the morning and your hand is in a fist and it's painful and you have to pry it open.
One of the reasons that I'm so passionate about making MetaFlex is my grandmother, she had really bad arthritis and she had that problem with her hand closing up at night. So she would hold onto a tennis ball and put a sock over top and sleep like that so that she would not have a fist when she woke up.
But this takes it a step further. It has those adjustable bands for each finger and then also has the compression. So you're not going to get that stiffness when you wake up. You're going to wake up with good circulation and your hand's going to be extended and you're going to be ready for the day.
A Personal Mission
Zach Aiden: That's interesting and such a cool story that you made this to help your grandma. Was she ever able to use it?
Téa Phillips: No, unfortunately I took too long to get it to market and she passed a year before I was able to do it.
Zach Aiden: I'm sorry to hear about her passing, but I think it is something beautiful that you've obviously done this to, because of the impact that she made on you. And now it's going to have tons of impact for other people's. How long have you been, how long has this been out in the market?
Téa Phillips: We've been on the market for over two years now and it's been really incredible, but I made it way back in 2018 and I was studying engineering at Tennessee Tech University and I made MetaFlex and I won some pitch competitions and raised some money and got some patents and started going.
But I also graduated that same year and I graduated. I had some money, but not enough to live on and invest in the business. So I also had a job offer and I'm an engineer. So I worked as an engineer for about three years and saved up as much as I could.
And then my grandmother was getting worse and I felt guilty that I hadn't brought it to market. I was making money and like living this life that I had been, I went to engineering school and it sucked. And like, I was out and doing the things that I loved doing and I had a really interesting job. And so I had MetaFlex on the back burner and then she was getting worse.
And I realized how much this would have helped her improve her quality of life just by having better mobility and less pain, which is so important. And she didn't have a lot of money. So she wasn't regularly going to a doctor that wasn't like the stomach doctor or the cancer doctor. She had so many health problems and a lot of it was caused. They were chronic conditions and they were caused by the fact that she was low income her whole life. And that stress really affects your health.
MetaFlex is intentionally very affordable to make sure that everyone who needs this care can get it.
Where to Get MetaFlex
Zach Aiden: That's awesome. That's awesome. Where can people get it? Can they just get it on Amazon? Do you, can they buy it through your site?
Téa Phillips: You can buy on Amazon, but you should shop local and go directly to my website. So MetaFlexglove.com, M-E-T-A, flexglove.com.
We're also in a handful of stores. So if you go to our website and look at our store locator, we might be in a pharmacy near you. If you're a veteran, we're selling in a few VA medical centers across the country. And if we're not in your VA medical center, have them reach out to me and we can get it supplied for you.
And we also just recently got covered by insurance. So if you can get your doctor to prescribe you something like MetaFlex, you can get it covered that way. There's also FSA and HSA, your health and flexible spending accounts because MetaFlex is a class one medical device, which was a barrier to entry and getting this launched. It was so expensive and time consuming to go through that process, but we're trying to help as many people as we can.
It's working. I've got reviews on Amazon that call it a miracle. I have people who say thank you. Like my husband can finally sleep at night. I have people who used to use pain cream for their arthritis that don't have to use that anymore because the glove has helped to reduce their pain like on a long-term basis. So we're also doing some research. Yeah, it's, it's been a really rewarding, difficult, but rewarding journey.
Supporting Veterans
Zach Aiden: Yeah, as all like startups are. We'll have links to all your stuff in the show notes. So folks will easily be able to access that. Tell me some more about your connection to the VA and how you've been helping veterans.
Téa Phillips: I'm just so proud of that. I, like many people have people who have served in my family. I didn't serve myself, but I wanted to find a way to support our troops and to support the people that are out there protecting our freedoms.
So we have a partner that buys from me and then resells into the VA, which is my business plan is to partner with these people because what we're really good at MetaFlex is making new products and innovating and hitting that next innovation and the next breakthrough that's going to change people's lives. And people already know how to do sales and people already know how to do marketing.
So we're trying to partner with people who do that side of it. So I have a distributor that buys from me and resells into the VA and I'm working with other distributors that buy and resell into hospitals and medical systems, long-term care facilities, that type thing. So if you're any of those people reach out to me, we're partnering with people right now, but I find those people by going to conferences and trade shows and just showing people what we have in MetaFlex.
Prevention and Early Intervention
Zach Aiden: That's awesome. I was thinking you were talking there and just something that came to mind was like, I can obviously see the benefit of this if someone who's actively suffering from arthritis or some other kind of condition like that. Is this helpful for people who like preventatively or maybe like earlier on in the diagnosis before things are like, like overwhelming? Like where does someone on their journey, what's the best time to start using the MetaFlex glove?
Téa Phillips: So you can definitely use it preventatively, but also I have, if I'm swiping on my phone all day on TikTok or whatever I'm on, or if I'm typing all day on my computer, because I do that a lot, either my thumb joint will hurt or like my middle finger joint will hurt and it'll hurt for days. But if I wear the gloves and I get home or right after I'm doing that activity or I sleep in them, I don't have pain the next day.
So it's good for mild pain, it's good for more than mild pain. It's good as preventative because if you want to prevent injury, compression, stretching and strengthening are good. And when you are injured, compression, stretching and strengthening. It's really, it's holistic, it's comprehensive hand health and it's as a wearable and yeah, so I'm really proud of what we've created.
Who Benefits from MetaFlex
Zach Aiden: Yeah. So I can see it being helpful for specifically people who even work with their hands all day, whether that's like some type of physical activity. Do you have like surgeons who wear these things or like mechanics or gamers or something like that?
Téa Phillips: I have a hand surgeon who sleeps in MetaFlex gloves to prevent carpal tunnel or to manage carpal tunnel. So I have a hand surgeon that's sleeping in these, which I'm so proud of.
Also, yeah, anyone that's doing repetitive motion, whether that's gamers, people who are doing yard work, people who are typing all day, people who are writing, people who are having to run and chase after their kids or their grandkids. I feel like we're all using our hands so much.
And that's how we are getting these overuse injuries. Even the people like I talked about earlier that are just swiping on their phones. Like you may notice your hand is starting to hurt when you do that. So try sleeping in the MetaFlex gloves or just wearing them for a little bit during your nightly routine. And they're going to help with your pain and help to prevent those injuries and extend the lifetime use of your hand.
Zach Aiden: That's awesome and just so obvious like the value that it provides very cool.
Téa Phillips: When I made it, I was so surprised that someone had not made this before. Like we got it patented and all of that. And I was like, how did no one do this before? It's such a simple idea, it, yeah, we're MetaFlex owns MetaFlex.
The Journey to Market - Challenges and Breakthroughs
Zach Aiden: Yeah, that's awesome. The audience is everyday healthcare consumers, but you don't have to go in super, super deep. But can you give us just a little insight into, you kind of like briefly mentioned all the work that you did, the time and resources to make this. Can you give us like just a little timeline of what you had to do in order to make this a reality so that people can use it and benefit from their lives?
Téa Phillips: Yeah. So like I said, I made it in 2018 and then I also graduated college and started a job and worked full time. I had MetaFlex in the back burner until 2021 when my grandma started getting worse and I realized like, I wanted to bet on myself and I wanted to bring this to market and change people's lives. And I quit my job and I had a manufacturer lined up, but they weren't the manufacturer I needed to use. And I learned that from registering with the FDA and learning all of that that goes into it.
So I had money I had saved up as much as I could. But I did a lot of the work myself because I didn't save up that much. It's so expensive and what took me the most time was raising the money to build the team and do all the things that we needed to do like patents are expensive.
FDA registration this year is nine thousand dollars and it's going up every year. It's been going up like a thousand dollars since I started registering as a medical device establishment, so I had to read through all of the code of federal regulations and figure out where my device falls in and email the FDA and be like, for real, I'm a medical device. This is not going to hurt anybody. But because circulation changes, you're changing the way the body functions by changing circulation. But I had to be registered as a medical device to be able to tell people that.
So it was getting registered with the FDA, researching all of like the specific barcodes I need, which is GS1. GS1 is where you find the universal product codes. I built our website. I got us onto Amazon. We're also on walmart.com. I started pulling together a team of some wonderful advisors who are experts in marketing and sales and finance and leadership and all of these things that like I didn't know how to do yet. I'm an engineer. I know how to make products. I know how to design streamlined processes and I can figure just about anything out, but a lot of things that I still need to learn and have learned.
So building a team of people to advise me and meeting with them regularly and then raising money. I liquidated my 401k and my Roth IRA and every little crypto that I had on my GameStop stock back in 2022. It was doing well then, really fun. But I liquidated everything that I had. I maxed out my credit cards. I got a small business loan. I got personal loans from some of my advisors and people who believed in me. I got a part-time job because I ran out of money.
And eventually I got investment. And with that investment, though, the world has been opened up. I have been able to invest into our marketing. It was me running our social media accounts and me driving to all these pharmacies being like, hey, do you wanna buy like a dozen pairs of gloves to try it out? And me making all the calls and just trying to do it all myself.
And now we're finally to a point where I have a full-time employee who does marketing and I have a part-time employee who's a certified hand therapist. And he's writing this list of all the things that MetaFlex is good for and why that we're using in our marketing. And I have a part-time sales guy who's reaching out to all these people and like following up with them and posting on LinkedIn.
And I'm finally being able to build this team, which is changing the game. And it's the barrier to entry over and over again is money. And I don't come from money. And until recently, I didn't know anybody with money. So it was, that was our big barrier was just to have the fuel to grow it. Money's a resource.
I grew up without a lot of money. So asking people for money felt illegal and it's so wrong and I felt so dirty talking about money. And now, I mean, it's just another resource and we're spending money and we're making money and I'm more comfortable with it now, but it's, I designed our packaging. I still answer every customer inquiry that comes through the website. Yeah. So it's been an insanely difficult journey.
But ultimately rewarding because I have a medical device that is relieving people's pain and allowing them to live their life the way they want to live it. Ultimately very rewarding.
Final Thoughts and Inspiration
Zach Aiden: Yeah. It's such a great thing to wake up and know that like what you do directly benefits other people and make your bread from it. it's like, it's such a, it's such a great thing having a business that, benefits people and really generates value for people. Wow. That is so awesome. And I'm so glad that our listeners, I really got to hear your story of how you actually made this thing happen because like it's here on the website and you can make an order and it'll show up in at your house, it took a lot of time, energy from you and sounds like several people and money to make it happen. Bravo. Bravo to you, Téa. Is there anything else that you want to tell our audience before we head out for the day?
Téa Phillips: Yeah. A few things that I live by: Keep moving forward. Have you ever seen the movie, Meet the Robinsons? It's so good. And there's this kid and he's just down and out and his science experiments keep failing, but he keeps moving forward and he builds this life, the life of his dreams and the life that he wants. And it's important to when you fail, celebrate those. That's a learning lesson. It's not like reflective of me as a person I failed.
And then if it's humanly possible, you can do it. You're human. You just have to have the audacity to say, this is my big dream and I'm going to, I'm going to chase it and build that for myself.
And if you want to follow me, I talk about some of this stuff on LinkedIn. Yeah, you can follow me on LinkedIn. Go to our website, check it out, metaflexglove.com, and see our press features. We're also on Instagram and Facebook and TikTok and all of those things. I love talking to my customers. So send us a message and let's chat.