Virta Health is in the diabetes reversal business. It’s a medical group that for a decade has been aggressively coaching people with diabetes and cardiometabolic disease to radically change their eating habits–basically to eat the right things for them, to saity. Some how in a nation obsessed with processed food and carbs they have succeeded for a lot of people. And the business is growing fast, with over $160m in annual run rate. Ten years in since it started I spoke with CEO Sami Inkinen about how and why it works, and what the future for this approach is in a world of GLP1s (and no there’s no GLP sales in that revenue number!)–Matthew Holt
Avasure: Tech for helpful watching & remote care in hospitals
Lisbeth Votruba, the Chief Clinical Officer and Dana Peco, the AVP of Clinical Informatics from Avasure came on THCB to explain how their AI enabled surveillance system improves the care team experience in hospitals and health care facilities. Their technology enables remote nurses and clinical staff to monitor patients, and manage their care in a tight virtual nursing relationship with the staff at the facility, and also deliver remote specialty consults. They showed their tools and services which are now present in thousands of facilities and are helping with the nursing shortage. A demo and great discussion about how technology is improving the quality of care and the staff experience–Matthew Holt
Lynn Rapsilber on Nurse Practitioners
There are a lot of nurse practitioners in the US–over 400,000 (compared to around 900,000 MDs & DOs), and we are training 40,000 a year. But how they are going to be used is not entirely clear. Lynn Rapsilber is an NP whose organization, the National Nurse Practitioner Entrepreneur Network, is working to help her fellow NPs with their professional and business development. She came on THCB to discuss how NPs are developing and how she thinks NPs will contribute in the future as we deal with the current crisis in primary care–Matthew Holt
TytoCare–The Last Few Inches of Telehealth?
Tamir Gottfried, the Chief Commercial and Strategy Officer at TytoCare came on THCB to show us how their remote device works to deliver the last few inches of telehealth. Most telehealth is just a video call but with Tyto’s device, the patient can asynchronously (and/or synchronously) take their vital signs including videos and pictures of the skin, ears, mouth, heartbeat et al, and share it with their doctor. It actually amazes me that they haven’t been more popular but in the last few years Tyto has made significant inroads with health plans and providers delivering their devices, as well as adding chronic care management module, with a forthcoming smart clinic (AI) companion. Tamir explained who, how what and why to me, and gave a not too gruesome demo–Matthew Holt
Penguin–The Flightless Bird of Health AI
Fawad Butt and Missy Krasner started a new AI company which is building a big platform for both plans and providers in health care. Penguin Ai has a cute name, but is serious about trying to provide an underlying platform that is going enable agents across the enterprise. They are health care only, as opposed to the big LLMs. But does health care need a separate AI company? Are the big LLMs going to give up health? And what about that Epic company? Join us as we discuss how this AI thing is going to be deployed across health care, and how Penguin is going to play. Oh and they raised $30m series A to start getting it done–Matthew Holt
Boulder Care: Stephanie Strong & Marianna Zaslavsky
Stephanie Strong, CEO & Marianna Zaslavsky, the (relatively new) Head of Growth at Boulder Care came on THCB to tell Matthew Holt about their service which delivers medication assisted treatment for those suffering from substance used disorder, via telehealth. Stephanie has been one of the leading advocates for getting patients, especially those on Medicaid, access to treatment. She led a campaign to get the DEA to continue to allow substance abuse treatment using medication via telehealth. Marianna joined this summer with the goal of helping patients get access via managed care plans. We discussed a lot about the potential for Boulder to continue its harm reduction strategy for patients, and also the potential limits that might be coming via Medicaid reductions as part of the BBB. Stephanie & Boulder are supporting a campaign called Majority for Medicaid which is raising awareness about the impact of Medicaid cuts on these patients. Some of those stories are here
You can also text MAJORITY to 50409 to urge your representative to protect the promise of Medicaid.
Dr Kaelee Brockway on AI for physical therapy training
Dr Kaelee Brockway is a professor of education and physical therapy who has built a series of AI based “patients” for her PT students to train on. Kaelee is a pioneer in using these tools for training. She showed me the personas that she has built with LLMs that are now being used by her students to figure out how to train their soft skills–a huge part of any training. This a great demo and discussion about how clinical professionals are going to use LLMs in their training and their work–Matthew Holt
Owen Tripp, Included Health, talks AI
“So far AI in health care is being used to drive existing profits on workflows and increase revenue per event that patients in the end have to pay for. That’s not a win for anyone long term!” Included Health’s CEO Owen Tripp dives into the present and future use of AI, LLMs, patient self-triage and self treatment and all that. Another interesting conversation on where patient facing AI will end up — Matthew Holt
BTW here’s my Conversation with Ami Parekh & Ankoor Shah
Here’s Owen Tripp discussing Included Health.
Here’s Owen’s piece on AI, What’s in your chatbot?
Ami Parekh & Ankoor Shah, Included Health
Ami Parekh is the Chief Health Officer & Ankoor Shah, is VP, Clinical Excellence at Included Health. I had a long conversation with them about the philosophy of how we are doing population health and how we fix the system that we have today. I’m arguing for more primary care, but Ami restated it and says, you need somone you trust who is an expert who can help you make decisions. And this might not be a human! How do we change the system, and how does telehealth work now and how will it change? Defining health from the person perspective, not the way the health system wants to define it! Matthew Holt
Steve Brown, CureWise — AI for patients
Steve Brown is a genuine digital health OG. Starting with video games for kids with diabetes he eventually turned Health Hero into one of the first disease management companies. It was used in the VA to manage patients at home with CHF, diabetes and more and eventually sold to Bosch. Steve left health care for 15 years, but then at the start of this year had his own health issue. Which turned out to be cancer. He turned to AI and has built an amazing early stage patient facing AI doctor, called CureWise. It essentially has turned LLMs into multiple doctors. He gave me a full and fascinating demo. This is clearly the future but it’s also the present for Steve who is patient zero and the first user as well as the CEO. Amazing stuff. — Matthew Holt
