The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway - Office Hours: Healthcare and Technology — with Aagya Mathur

Episode Date: October 4, 2021

Aagya Mathur, the CEO and Co-founder of Aavia, joins Scott to answer a question about integrating health apps like Aavia with primary care. They also discuss how blockchain can be applied in the healthcare industry, and how the pandemic has accelerated trends in the space. Follow Aagya on Twitter, @aagya320. Music: https://www.davidcuttermusic.com / @dcuttermusic Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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NMLS 1617539. Welcome to the Prop G Pod's Office Hours. This is the part of the show where we answer your questions about business, big tech, entrepreneurship, and whatever else is on your mind today. We're joined by Agia Mathur, who's here to help us answer your questions on the intersection of healthcare and technology. Agia is the co-founder and CEO of Avia, a hormone health platform working to help women optimize their physical and mental health. Why is Agia here? Because I was so fucking freaked out and horrified by that legislation, the heartbeat legislation, whatever you want to call it, let's send women back

to old Spain legislation in Texas. I thought it would make sense to bring some attention to some of the very interesting startups and entrepreneurs attacking, I shouldn't say attacking, helping or addressing women's health. All right, Agia,

where does this podcast find you? Hey, Scott, thanks so much for having me. I am currently in Brooklyn, New York. Brooklyn with all the cool kids. So walk us through how, is it Avia or Avia? Avia. Avia. Tell us how Avia works other than you needing to change the name. Go ahead. So Avia is a hormone health brand and we're guiding people on a health journey that's better than their mothers. And that's not just by adding like pastel colors into our color palette or anything like that, but really helping them to understand their personal hormone cycle and how it's uniquely impacting them day to day and then what they can do about it. So our ovarian hormone cycle impacts everything from our quality of muscle toning to our quality of sleep,

skin, mental health, you name it. And so we're really helping people map that, understand what they can do about that day-to-day to really optimize their quality of life and all things beyond that. The other thing is that for birth control pill users, which is also a hormone, we have a smart case of patented sensor technology that knows when you've actually taken your birth control pill and reminds you until you actually take it. And the case is connected to the Avia app via Bluetooth and automatically records what time you took the pill so we can learn and improve upon your behavior. The average person misses 20% of their birth control pills every month. And that means in the U.S. alone, this is a million unintended pregnancies each year. And mind you, there are only 4 million births in the U.S. each

year. So as there are these terrible abortion bans, as you were alluding to or talking about, Scott, earlier, that are being put into place in our country. Not everyone has the ability to terminate these unwanted pregnancies, so we are another line of defense there. And taking the pill on time means higher efficacy, which means less need for abortions. In fact, right now, when anyone purchases a case or donates money, we're sending a free case to a Texan pill user, and we're really standing in solidarity with Texans, and we all deserve the same reproductive freedom. Yeah, so it's fairly common knowledge that men's health care gets much

greater funding, much greater attention. It strikes me that the perfect analogy is that the health tech company that got all this attention was called HIMSS. And then all of a sudden, two years later, they go, oh, wait, HIMSS and and hers. That, to me, summarizes sort of all research around healthcare in terms of a gender bias. I love the term Femtech, and it's a growing industry with a huge market or market potential or TAM or whatever you want to call it. Revenue from Femtech is expected to reach over a billion dollars by 2024. Can you tell us about some of the market leaders in this space right now? We want to bring some oxygen not only to Avia, but some of the other companies in the space. Yeah. So one thing that's really important to note when it comes to healthcare of people with

ovaries is that it's not just things that are OB-GYN related, right? So this is where we have to keep in mind that we have different chromosomes and this impacts ourselves in every way possible differently. So even things like heart health. So there's a company called Bloomer Tech that's really taking into consideration that heart disease impacts women differently than it impacts men. What we need to do to treat that needs to be differently. The adverse effects of the medications that come to us is different. So they have a smart bra that is helping to collect the data and to help improve the research that's out there so that we can better treat them. There's a company called Electra Health, also MIT

founder, good friends of mine now, where they're helping to smash the taboos when it comes to menopause. They're using education, technology services, and community in that space as well. There's a company called Lita Health, which they're actually helping with sexual health survivors, where you can have an at-home kit instead of having to wait to go to the hospital or to do all sorts of different things in that way as well. And then another thing that we're really seeing come together quite a bit is mental health and emotional wellness as well coming together. And that's where you're actually seeing this across the spectrum of all of the women's health companies is that we're actually looking at

a holistic health where there's a blending of mind and body rather than just one element here, one element there, this doctor for that, and that doctor for this. So we're going to take one quick break. And when we're back, we'll answer a couple of listener questions on the future of healthcare and tech. Stay with us. The Capital Ideas Podcast now features a series hosted by Capital Group CEO, Mike Gitlin. Through the words and experiences of investment professionals, you'll discover what differentiates

their investment approach, what learnings have shifted their career trajectories, and how do they find their next great idea? Invest 30 minutes in an episode today. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Published by Capital Client Group, Inc. Hey, it's Scott Galloway. And on our podcast, Pivot, we are bringing you a special series about the basics of artificial intelligence. We're answering all your questions. What should you use it for? What tools are right for you? And what privacy issues should you ultimately

watch out for? And to help us out, we are joined by Kylie Robeson, the senior AI reporter for The Verge, to give you a primer on how to integrate AI into your life. So tune into AI Basics, How and When to Use AI, a special series from Pivot sponsored by AWS, wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to Office Hours with Aga Mathur, the CEO and co-founder of Avia. First question. Hi, Prof G. This is Mark from Seattle. I was curious with Avia,

if they had plans for integrating with other apps in the digital space and particularly primary care, how can we link what you do in an app like Avia, if they had plans for integrating with other apps in the digital space and particularly primary care, how can we link what you do in an app like Avia with your overall healthcare experience? Thanks so much. Avia. Yeah, this is such an important concept as health and wellness traditionally has been pretty siloed, going to this doctor for this and going to that place for this other thing. But Avia truly sees it as holistic health where mind and body are really working together. So while today, actually, our members are already taking data from Avia to their doctors where primary care or to psychiatrists or to OB-GYNs, and that's where we've already

seen a lot of impact. For example, one of our members took their data to a psychiatrist and she realized that she'd been diagnosed with clinical depression, but the symptoms that she was recording, the times and things like that really led to her having PMDD, which meant that she now has a different diagnosis, different treatment plan, and just a different way of viewing it too. And we can't wait to see more of things like that. And Avio is going to be even more powerful when we take it to the next level by integrating this with other wearables. There are wearables such as Whoop and Apple Watch that really are providing

already these health insights. And when we can now layer this on with the health insights specific to people who have ovaries at the intersection of mental and physical health, it's going to be really powerful because when you think about primary care, you're going once a year, maybe twice if you're getting sick, this is an opportunity for us to really be proactive

and be looking at things 365 days a year rather than just that once. And ovarian hormone cycles really do impact everything. And that's why we will continue to expand upon that. Next question. Hi, Prof G. My name is Derek and I'm talking to you from Cape Town in South Africa. My question really is related to blockchain and healthcare. I have listened to your show recently and you've talked about how blockchain can be applied to the music industry and various other industries. So really, I would like to find out if you've thought about how blockchain can be implemented or used in developing healthcare. I work in the managed healthcare industry for medical insurance. And so I'm looking for a way where, you know,

the future of blockchain can be used to improve the service, to make sure that benefit is evenly shared. At the same time, blockchain and the whole crypto industry is blowing up and we can see a better way to implement strategies to make healthcare work better for everyone. Thank you. Agi, any thoughts on blockchain and healthcare? Yeah, I have a lot. So let's see how far we can get here. So I actually love the specificity of this question. I have two good friends who I nerd out about this with, Devin Walsh and Jimmy Comfort. And I think one of the

biggest things that the listener asked was around how can it be used or implemented? And the hardest part of it isn't actually going to be the technology itself, but just like most other things in healthcare, it's really going to be figuring out who has the incentives to actually implement it and then getting through political, organizational, regulatory hurdles that really hold up everything else. So that being said, broadly speaking, the most common use of blockchain in healthcare that people think about is for you, yourself, to really maintain the personal health record. And blockchain really is ensuring that the data can't be corrupted and that it can be private, but also publicly verifiable. And that way, you know that your medical data isn't piecemeal, but you actually

have the full look at it. You don't have to rely on others to protect the data. You can share it how you need to rather than worrying about it being shared without your consent. And the list kind of goes on there. Then you can also build applications securely on top of that so that your data is still secure. But I think more specifically also to the question, typically when it comes to healthcare and payments and healthcare, there are three players, right? There's payers, providers, and patients, sometimes more. And when it comes to money moving for this patient care today, the record of the payment or the record of the actual care, as well as the payment for each of these is really done at different times and different places, stuff like that. So there's

really an opportunity to use things like smart contracts, Ethereum, to really apply the right rules and to then move the money in a single transaction and have the record of it in one place. That's an oversimplification of what really happens under the hood. But if we're keeping it at a high level, that's really what we're looking at, right? And just like cutting out so much of the administrative overhead. Yeah, it seems that basically, if you're talking about a ledger, the ability for, it feels as if record keeping is sort of a no-brainer. I wonder if the HIPAA compliance and trust of having all of your data, it's like initially people didn't trust the internet. I wonder how consumers feel about having their, you know, people are especially

and understandably concerned about their data as it relates to their health. The thing I've been thinking a lot about is, what if Stanford Medical Center, Cedars, or Langone, or one of these great healthcare institutions or hospital networks basically says we're issuing a coin and we are seeders. And we have pretty much offer everything from cradle to grave, literally OBGYN. We deliver the baby. We manage, we can manage all your healthcare and we're going to take the level of service

to the next level. We have a great brand and we're issuing 10,000 coins or a hundred, probably a hundred, a hundred thousand coins. And it costs, every one of them costs a certain amount of money and you never pay anything, no insurance, no administrative bullshit, take out the bureaucracy, the complexity, the fundraising. We're just going to capitalize or overcapitalize the institution

and we're going to implement technology. And if you have any pain, anything, a rash, you email text and you get the best service from one of the best hospital or medical centers in the world. I wonder what that coin would go for. I bet, I bet that that coin would go for between $100,000 and $1 million. And overnight, Cedars does an ICO of $10 to $100 billion. It would create greater income inequality. You could have people buy a coin and then donate it to middle or low-income families. But I think some of these institutions,

medical centers and universities, I think Stanford is going to do this at some point. Have a Stanford coin and just say, as long as your kid meets certain criteria, as long as you want to stay involved, come to football games, network, be a part of our community, have someone in your family and go to one of our schools or graduate schools. We're issuing a Stanford coin and we're only issuing 100,000 of them. I think people would

pay a million bucks for that coin. Anyways, I think there's big opportunities. I think the medical industry has very underrated or under-monetized brands. I wonder if a way to capitalize or factor or securitize that brand equity might be through some sort of coin offering. Anyways, question number three. I'm really interested in your thoughts on how healthcare industry is going to be disrupted and how this disruption is going to be accelerated with emerging technology and COVID pandemic? I love healthcare, but I'm looking to get into opportunities that are more forward looking and have potential for explosive growth versus climbing one more rank on the corporate ladder. I want to take some risks and I'm able to afford to. What should I consider?

Thank you so much. I love this question. We could be here all day to talk about everything that is going to be changing and accelerating, especially with this pandemic and tech coming about. So a few things that are coming to mind off the top of my head are consumers are really just demanding more from healthcare, whether it's ease of access or it's continuous care from the healthcare system. Earlier, we were actually talking about continuous primary care instead of just going for a physical once a year. And this is everything from wearables, which adoption has really skyrocketed during the pandemic. There's a

company called Whoop, which was able to actually somewhat detect and also suggest if you might have COVID before the symptoms even appear. There's a company called Levels, which is doing continuous glucose monitoring, or Everly Health, which is doing at-home testing for everything from food sensitivity to cholesterol and more. And these are things that are making things both easier, but then also more continuous so that you're not just having to go into the doctor for each thing or one time a year.

We also talked about regulations earlier being a big barrier when it comes to technology advancement. However, during the pandemic, we did see that the regulations for telehealth had to be loosened so that we could do these virtual visits. This is something that we're now seeing cascade when it comes to mental health as well. And there are companies that are really building technology

on top of that in order to make it even more seamless and to provide the type of care that we need that we would have in traditional care settings. And so that people can have better treatment as well that's also affordable. The other thing that I'm very much excited about is just the use of AI and machine learning. Very broadly speaking, better abilities to diagnose individuals, spot health trends at population levels, exciting things there. And then there's also a lot more that is happening when it comes to just digitizing healthcare in general. And that's where we're seeing different companies that are able to use the technology, use machine learning, use AI, and be able to do things like cancer drug discovery.

There's a company called One3 Biotech that's doing this, and also just in reducing administrative overhead, things like that, too. What can we do to be more supportive of Femtech? Yeah, there are lots of ways to support these companies. First of all, people can get started by educating themselves to understand that people with ovaries are not little men and biologically everything really works differently for us. We're talking about half of the world's population whose health has been largely ignored. And there is such little attention to this because women's health is typically underfunded both privately and publicly. So make that wire into these private

companies and fund the public research. And then also make these strategic connections, right? Whether it's to an executive at a health plan, it's a provider who should know about the services we're providing, it's an investor, whatever it may be. And if after this, you're still looking for ways to help, definitely feel free to message me and I'm happy to help out in that way too. Agia Mathur is the co-founder and CEO of Avia, a hormone health platform working to help women optimize their physical and mental health. She joins us from Brooklyn, New York. Thank you so much, Agia. Best of luck on what you're doing.

Take care. Thanks so much for having me, Scott. That's all for this episode. Again, if you'd like to submit a question, please visit officehours.propgmedia.com. That's officehours.propgmedia.com. Our producers are Caroline Chagrin and Drew Burrows. Claire Miller is our assistant producer. If you like what you heard, please follow, download, and subscribe. Thank you for listening to the Prof G Pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network.

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