Hogni Federico Fridriksson

My Robophysio Journey- About Me

My name is Hogni Federico Fridriksson and I live in Isafjordur Iceland. I am a Physical Therapist and work in a clinic called Sjukrathjalfun Vestfjarda. Prior to moving to Isafjordur in 2022 I lived in worked in the United States in medical device marketing and product management and I have an MBA from Duke University that I finished in 2003. I worked for companies such as Johnson & Johnson, Ossur and NuVasive. While I enjoy being back in clinical practice I still have the itch to work on technology that can help people. Physical Therapy has had very little technical advancement in the last almost 30 years since I graduated. I would like to change this, with the aging of the population, not enough people graduating from PT school and others retiring or leaving the profession for other reasons like I did we don't have enough work capacity to treat all the patients in the future. A typical therapist can treat 15-16 patients in a full work day and that is exhausting both physically and mentally. I believe technology that makes the therapist's work easier can make a big difference just like it did in other industries like fishery and automotive. You may not think there are many commonalities between these and the treatment of people with various physical ailments but there certainly is in terms of processes and workflow.

As for family and personal life I am divorced and have two daughters Theodora and Kristin who are 24 and 20 years old and live in the United States. In my spare time I like to be active for example I play badminton and go alpine skiing, play and write songs on the guitar and I also teach yoga.

I am excited about learning new technical skills in the Fab Academy, while I have worked with engineers and product development teams before my role was limited to business cases, user input, marketing and promotion of the product. My frustration has often been that we spend too much time in the powerpoint stage and don't actually make anything that we can test. I look forward to being able to do more of that work myself and improving my time management and documentation skills as well.