Some people say you shouldn’t mix business with family, but Renee Dua and Nick Desai don’t seem to agree with this philosophy. The husband-and-wife duo founded physician house call company Heal in 2014 — and now that the company has been sold to Humana, they have launched their second startup together.
On Tuesday, they announced that their new healthcare app, called Together by Renee, is available for download.
The Los Angeles-based startup claimed to be the first app to use generative AI to manage time-consuming healthcare tasks for older patients, those with chronic diseases and their stressed-out caregivers.
“Too often, health tech solutions are made by tech bros in their 20s and 30s who have a substantially higher tech proficiency than their parents and uncles and aunts in their 50s and 60s and 70s — but they are the people who actually consume healthcare in America,” Desai, who serves as Together’s CEO, said in an interview.
He thinks generative AI holds “real potential” to close that chasm and create products that are intuitive and useful for older people. Desai is 53 and Dua is 49.
Together requires no typing or data entry from its users. Instead, it relies on the smartphone camera and AI to manage users’ healthcare tasks like scheduling appointments, refilling medications, completing complex forms and understanding insurance coverage. The app also completes these tasks instead of guiding users through the process or simply reminding them.
The app’s goal is to make it easier for patients to complete follow-up steps, stick to their care plan and manage their medications, Desai explained. These tasks are difficult for most older Americans to keep up with — in fact, research shows that less than half of U.S. adults take all their medications correctly, he pointed out.
With Together, users can simply take a picture of their prescription pill bottle and the app will automatically remind them when they need to take the drug. In addition, the app will schedule a telehealth appointment when that prescription needs to be refilled and ensure that the pharmacy delivers the medication to the patient’s address.
The app also uses large language models to help patients get questions answered by their doctors, schedule appointments and manage their calendars. Together didn’t develop any of its own generative AI models — instead, the startup integrated several existing models, such as the ones developed by OpenAI, Whisper and Amazon, Desai explained.
The company also uses technology created by Israeli company Binah.ai to help users stay in the know about their health. The AI model allows smartphone cameras to measure people’s vitals — after a Together user takes a selfie, the technology analyzes the blood vessels in their eyes to produce measurements for their blood pressure, heart rate, heart rate variability, respiratory rate and blood oxygen. Binah.ai’s technology hasn’t been cleared by the FDA, so its insights are for informational purposes only.
This feature is attractive for worried caregivers because it can help them know their loved ones are doing well even when they’re far away.
Desai acknowledged that Together isn’t the only company trying to make things easier for patients and their caregivers — there’s also startups like Rightway and Honor. He argued that his app stands out from its competitors because it completes tasks for its users rather than compiling a list of tasks for them to complete.
“We don’t want to tell you it’s time to call the pharmacy. We want to call the pharmacy for you,” Desai said. “Another difference between other apps and ours is that we know people don’t live in isolation. I’m managing my health, I look after my dad, I care about my father in law — in our app, we can manage all of these people in one place.”
Together can be downloaded for free on Apple’s App Store, and the app will soon also be available for free for those with Android and Google phones.
The company’s business model “will be to build an audience and then allow insurance companies to pay to integrate their product offerings into the Together experience,” Desai said. He pointed out that payers have been making big investments in telehealth platforms and digital health services that have “very low utilization.”
Health insurers can pay to integrate these services into Together, and patients will be shepherded to them. For example, the app will figure out which online physical therapy service is covered by a user’s health plan, and it will schedule an appointment on that platform.
Photo: yongyuan, Getty Images
