Roadmap to a better future where 90% of healthcare is delivered through smartphones and home health workers that gives everyone a world class medical team in their pocket.
Our Mission:
To enable humans to reclaim their hijacked biology and take ownership over their health. We will push the world closer towards a better future where healthcare is a 10x better consumer experience for half the price.
The U.S. spent $4 Trillion on healthcare in 2022. It’s the single largest line item making up 20% of GDP – and growing. We spend more on healthcare than the total annual expenses of every other country on earth, except China.
And it gets worse. Our return on $4 trillion results in worse health outcomes. We are among the highest in death rates for treatable conditions. We have the highest rate of people with multiple metabolic and chronic conditions. One in five Americans hasn’t seen a doctor in 5 years or more, we’re obese, overly stressed, suffer with our mental health, our water is toxic, our food is coated in glyphosate, there’s PFAs in nearly everything, and Big Pharma has funded it all to sell you legal drugs that don’t tackle the root cause of the issue.
Healthcare has misaligned incentives from patient, payor, and provider. Insurers typically pay a certain amount for various treatments on a fee-for-service model so providers are incentivized to perform as many services as possible. The system ends up spending most of the money when it’s too late – when people have already gotten chronic conditions or have ended up in the hospital.
This has become a national crisis. We need to fix the complacency with the current state of healthcare — the health of our country literally depends on it.
Poor engagement, which is caused by poor consumer experience, is one of the biggest problems in healthcare. UnitedHealth Group, is the largest healthcare company in the world and has an NPS of 4 – out of 100. Only 40 to 50% of patients who are prescribed medications for management of chronic conditions like diabetes and hypertension adhere to their medication, causing 100,000 annual deaths and $100 billion in preventable medical costs each year. Existing players are corrupt – and at best negligent in missing the opportunity that could come from building a better experience for consumers that would engage them in their care.
If we reflect back to the early days of Uber, it was truly a magical experience. You pressed a button on your phone, and magically a car appeared and took you to your destination. At arrival, you just got out of the car without having to worry about payment. It just happened.
Health should be the same way. We shouldn't even know it exists — it's just magic. Somehow, in the water we drink, in the food we eat, in the habits we have and in our surrounding environment, we just maintain perfect health.
Now, that’s a few steps into the future but this should become the default and you quickly forget that you ever had to strive for optimal health and wellness. To get there, we’re going to need to engage people to set up this optimal health and wellness default.
As an initial go-to-market, we’ll target an affluent patient population like investors and venture backed founders who value convenience, personalization, and a data-driven approach to their health. These individuals have demanding schedules and require a healthcare solution that can adapt to their needs – and a growing employee base to offer services to in the future. Brian Chesky talks a lot about designing a 10 star experience for Airbnb guests. By prioritizing maniacal customer obsession, we’ll design such an experience for our early customers – just like Elon did with the Tesla Roadster, which led to strong margins and a sustainable business model. Something like this.
By re-thinking healthcare from first principles, we can break free from the traditional reactive model and develop a proactive approach that addresses the root causes of illness, metabolic and chronic conditions. This approach would involve continuous patient monitoring, personalized care plans, and a great emphasis on setting up a healthy environment; nutrition, exercise, sleep, hormones/supplementation, and stress management.
Key components of designing this experience include:
- Digital first – with in-person optionality via a health retreat.
- Care team – everyone gets a world class care team that specializes in different things (concierge md, nutritionist, wellness coach, etc) + a second opinion
- Data + Wearables for preventative care and monitoring.
- Health at home revamp – do things that don’t scale but provide significant value for clients
- Personalized plans
- Patient engagement
- Clinics of the future, Apple-esque consumer experience
- World class consumer experience from onboarding to initial assessment, to introduction to your care team to developing a personalized plan, to ongoing communication and continuous adjustments.
- Align incentives – via measurement we can celebrate wins clients have as a personal touch + rewards could incentivize behavior
We’ll start with a cash pay model but will have to explore value-based care, direct primary care, and self-insured employers to expand to a wider client base.
Fast forward 20 years, what could this full stack care delivery behemoth look like? It could be a company delivering 90% of healthcare through smartphones. This company would allow you to access the world’s best doctors through your phone, integrating human and software driven diagnostics, therapeutics, and medication delivery. Hospitals would still exist for surgery, emergency, and certain diagnostics and treatment, and home health workers would deliver some physical care. But for most healthcare, you’d hop on your phone, just like we do today for 90% of commerce. So, in short, here’s the master plan:
1. Build the world’s greatest consumer healthcare experience (a better mayo clinic EHP alternative) for investors and founders of venture backed technology companies. That Chesky-esque 10 star experience to bring high engagement healthcare to life.
2. Use that money to build software that can bring that experience to all their employees (and get into employment based insurance).
3. Use that money to bring it to even more people and underwrite even more insurance policies to become a ‘payvidor’ – a provider and a payor.
4. While doing above, bring to light the corruptness of the establishment. If you think the taxi medallions were corrupt, wait until you hear about big pharma.
We have the potential to alter the course of history, set a new standard for the healthcare industry, and fundamentally improve millions of lives.
It’s time to build.
But, don’t tell anyone 🤫
