Beyond 8 Figures

Renee Dua shares her journey of overcoming health care inefficiencies through AI tech in this Biz Bite segment. She discusses the importance of technology in enhancing access to care and the role of strategic leadership in innovating healthcare.

Gain insights into leveraging technology, understanding the importance of strategic leadership in challenging environments, and seeing how balancing personal well-being with professional growth can lead to significant industry impact. This episode is a must-watch for those looking to make a meaningful difference in the healthcare sector.

Listen to the full episode here - https://beyond8figures.com/podcast-episodes/

Watch the Episodes On YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@Beyond8Figures/videos

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Creators and Guests

Host
A.J. Lawrence
Serial entrepreneur with multiple exits, an angel investor, growth expert, and host of the Beyond8Figures podcast.
Guest
Renee Dua
Founder @TogetherApp and @HealApp

What is Beyond 8 Figures?

At Beyond 8 Figures, we believe in DELIBERATE entrepreneurship. It means creating a solid foundational framework for your entrepreneurial journey, building from a place of passion, and intentionally aligning your actions with your goals so that you can create success on your terms.

Join A.J. Lawrence, the journeyman entrepreneur with several 7 figure exits, as he shares honest conversations with successful entrepreneurs about their experiences starting and scaling businesses to $10M and beyond, the realities of being a modern-day entrepreneur, advice for practicing deliberate entrepreneurship, and more!

[Intro]

A.J. Lawrence:
The joy of technology is when it sort of just becomes part of our life and enhances it. The fear of technology is when it disrupts our life and changes everything we're familiar with. I really feel that Together has that more of an enhancement. But I like that kind of thought that you have put into that. Like, all right, this is a way of dealing with this and kind of coming through. You talked about the framework of watching your parents create these lives here as entrepreneurs, as doctors., what do you think helped you with these transitions that people can kind of learn from?

Renee Dua:
Yeah, well, most definitely being a caregiver for my parents, everything you see in the app. My father has an iPhone, and he was trying to do the data entry on Apple health to enter his medication, and he wasn't able to hold the phone and type the medicine. And my father's a physician, but he was having a hard time spelling these complicated names.

My father's also a complicated patient. Watching that experience, I thought, I'm never going to make someone enter data. I'm going to scan the pill bottle, and all the data is going to be entered, right? Being proactive as a physician. Every few weeks, I still get to see my patients, and when I see them, I break down a task list of four things invariably I want them to do. These are my complex kidney patients. And I promise you, even after knowing me for 20 years, more than half of them will only be able to complete two of the tasks. Some authorization didn't come through, some refill wasn't ready, some nonsense happens that prevents them from getting what they need. I couldn't sit on hold to make an appointment.

I got hung up on five times at cvs. Everybody has this story. And so hearing my patients having the privilege of being able to still see patients and then having our parents and me being their caregiver, that has been so instrumental in every aspect of what you see. Another really interesting thing or two interesting things in together, we incorporated your vitals. There is no point in taking medications left and right. If they're not working, there's just no point. So if you're taking blood pressure medicines, you can hold a literal smartphone up to your face for less than 60 seconds and get your blood pressure and you know, okay, it's working.

And in some ways, this is far better than going to a doctor's office fuddling with a blood pressure cuff. No batteries, it squeezes, it hurts. You're doing it yourself, which is complicated in and of itself. So this is nice. And then for me, and I say this in every single podcast that I'm given an opportunity to say it in, there is no health without mental health. Anybody who's treating the body and is not treating the mind is not doing anything right there something like, over 60% of diabetics are depressed. And we again have the ability within together to listen to the sound of your voice and determine, do you have symptoms of anxiety or depression?

In a future iteration, we'll be able to look at your insurance card, read it and say, here's an in network therapist, let's make you an appointment. We are routinely seeing that you're anxious and your blood pressures are elevated. Again, we're using modeling language models to put together a very reasonable case that someone is anxious, their blood pressure is going up, they need mental help, mental health help, right? Seems so practical, so easy, so commonsensical, and yet in the reality of medicine, people aren't getting mental health help. I don't care how many startups they are, there's no good outcome data that they're getting the help they need.

But they don't even know. No one has even stopped to give them an inkling of an idea that this is going on with you. So what I'm describing to you is, in medical terms, it's called care coordination. And what we're doing is we're saying, don't wait for the doctor care, coordinate for yourself. Let's give you some suggestions, let's guide you through what is happening to you, and let's let you take charge, take action, don't wait.

That's really, again, a very important vision. But I think to fundamentally answer your question, that's what I see my patients and my parents failing to do and how I think this software can help them to do.

A.J. Lawrence:
In describing that, I agree with you completely. I think that coordination is so amazing because as in very many aspects of life, there's so much noise of, you should do x in business marketing. And I'm always telling clients, never listen to people out there. Figure out first your foundation. Do the things that need to get done first before you try 20,000 things. And that's just to move people from one part of the web to the other. You're talking about how people live their lives just a little bit more important. And yet I almost feel the amount of noise around what you should be doing, how you should do this, do that, all that. Just having a simple coordination. How do you bring that kind of do the right things for the right reason approach into the app?

Renee Dua:
Well, so I'll answer that question personally and then professionally. Personally, I'm, again, altruistic doctor. Not interested in doing half the job, not interested in doing the wrong job, not interested in doing a piece of the job. I'm interested in a very big vision, which I was also at heal right. It was an enormous way ahead of its time company when we started heal right. So I think that's just who I am as a person. It's not interesting if I'm not solving a giant problem, right? But professionally, again, because I'm able to maintain my boards and study and see patients and put my money where my mouth is, I know what should be happening for good patient care. And then I build a team of product people and engineers, some of whom have been with me in my first company and have known me for years.

And they want to work with me because they like learning. Oh, that's what happens when you see a doctor, right? That's what should happen. Or that's what she's doing behind her computer screen. Or that's what she means when she says, go refill this medication. Here's what it's for. Or why she gets these labs. So it's about me teaching medicine to my team, my team of engineers and product people, and frankly, any other CEO or strategist that wants to work with me from a clinical perspective. And I think slowly and surely, there are more and more doctors in tech.

Not enough, but more. And I think this is especially when we actively see patients and actively care for people. I think this is the value we bring. We can train models intelligently to solve circular problems, right? We talk a lot about generative AI and all the security issues and the mistakes it's making. Who's teaching it, right? Who's teaching it? That's the million dollar problem. And I'd like to think I'm intelligent enough with the team. I have to teach some basic steps on this care coordination that can be very valuable and really sensible.

A.J. Lawrence:
Yeah, no, I think that is the interesting, because generative AI is so cool. But if you're not, especially in the case of together, if you're not adding that care to it, if you're not enhancing your own large language models to do so, yeah, there could be some issues. So the fact that you are is pretty impressive as you look forward and looking. I know together with Renee is still early, still moving. How are you looking at what success is going to be for yourself? Not for together with Renee, but yourself as an entrepreneur, as someone who is on this mission to kind of make a living. Yes. But really kind of solve these issues for people. What's success going to look like?

Renee Dua:
Yeah, I think for me, it's what I said, that people like you reach out, you find what I'm doing interesting. Interesting enough to try the app and use it and tinker with it.

Make it a part of your life and to see more and more of that, millions of people using this software and making it a part of their daily routine, because as you use it and it gets smarter, you can share it when you can share your data with people and they can use it and they can share their data with you. And as such, we're controlling our health information, right? We're not letting an EMR control it. We're not logging into a portal. And when we have control of our own health information and when we know what we need to do next, we are controlling the paradigm of how we're going to receive care. And we're demanding that I don't have to get a prior auth, right? I am diabetic, I am obese. I deserve Ozempic, right? It's changing people's lives. Everybody should get it, or Farxiga, whatever the medication is that can help. It is going to put power in the hands of the users, the patients, their caregivers, their loved ones, and they're going to say, like, I need these things.

You're actually withholding care for what? For a couple of bucks? It's going to turn, I think, the patients into the empowered people that can control how they expect and should have their health care executed. I think right now, American healthcare is for profit. And again, totally misaligned incentives on what is good for the patient. And so I want to do what's good for the patient. I want millions of people to agree and use this software to help themselves.