108: New Series! Innovators — Part 1

Uninvisible Pod with Lauren Freedman

Join us as we launch a brand new series on Uninvisible Pod — INNOVATORS! In this series, we will periodically release episodes including short-form interviews with founders whose work is creating waves of change in chronic and invisible illness and disability. First up, as we dive in to the end of the year and look forward into 2021: Yale graduate Celine Tien, founder and CEO of Flowly, a mobile platform for chronic pain and anxiety management; Yael Elish, formerly co-founder and head of product at Waze and now founder of StuffThatWorks, an AI-based crowdsourcing platform where people share information in a structured way about their experiences with a chronic condition, aimed at learning which treatments work best and for whom; and finally, Dave Korsunsky, healthcare entrepreneur and founder of Heads Up Health, a mobile app and web portal that integrates all of a patient’s health records and syncs with pharmacies, clinics, and a wide range of popular health and fitness apps. Like me, you might be reading this and saying, WHOA! I was so blown away by all these individuals and what their services offer the Spoonie community, I wanted to give them an opportunity to share their stories and the importance of their work with you. So: merry happy everything, from me, Celine, Yael, and Dave…to you!

Tune in as Celine, Yael, and Dave share:

• how Flowly offers interactive experiences that teach users to control their nervous system through mobile VR and biofeedback for relaxation training
• that biofeedback is traditionally difficult to access; and now, it’s fully accessible through Flowly
• that Flowly is affiliated with University of Pittsburgh and USC to make sure their app is truly efficacious
• that the work of biofeedback — and Flowly — is in creating new neural pathways
• how Celine’s upbringing influenced her to create Flowly
• the goal of StuffThatWorks: to empower patients and medical professionals through the creation of knowledge bases that are automatically analyzed and personalized
• how the information shared through StuffThatWorks is helping build the world’s largest and most up-to-date database of patient reported outcomes for every chronic condition
• that within each community on the StuffThatWorks platform, members can see insights about anything from age of onset, to most reported and most indicative symptoms, early symptoms, indicative comorbidities, aggravating factors, treatments, and more
• how AI crowdsourcing has the potential to fill the gaps in our understanding of medicine
• that so many clinical guidelines were written decades ago — and StuffThatWorks creates the opportunity to recreate the knowledge base for various chronic conditions en masse
• why Yael started StuffThatWorks: because her daughter had a chronic condition at a young age
• how technology has the potential to eliminate bias
• how Dave was inspired to create his company after his own battle with maladaptive stress syndrome and gut health issues
• about the potentially life-saving importance of managing and monitoring our own health records
• that as the doctor/patient relationship becomes increasingly depersonalized and decentralized, it’s vital we track our own medical records to present a full picture to caregivers
• why data access is empowerment; and that in enabling people to bring their health records together in one place, patients can prevent a misdiagnosis when medical emergencies arise
• the founding principle of Heads Up Health: that well-organized data holds the key to optimal health

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