Better Health Information Powered by People Like Me

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By Allon Bloch
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August 29, 2019

We founded K Health to pursue a simple yet profound mission—to empower consumers with trustworthy health information based on the health experiences of similar people—a group we call People Like Me, or PLM.

When symptoms set in, you’re often not sure what you have, which doctor to see, or which treatments are best for you. But when you compare your case to similar cases from people with biological traits like yours, such as age, gender, body mass, and blood pressure, you can see all the ways doctors diagnosed and treated people like you. With access to the health experiences of People Like Me, suddenly you don’t have to be in the dark about what’s going on with your body.

We all understand intuitively that learning from other people’s health journeys can unlock powerful insights for better health. Online forums and Facebook groups are full of headache and back pain patients sharing their stories with one another. But it can be tricky to determine if a treatment that worked for one person will work for another. Meanwhile, try to figure out your condition online, and the information you’ll get is usually generic and often inaccurate, misleading, and downright scary.

Today we check out what other people are saying before we try a new restaurant or hire a plumber. We’re focused on bringing this same kind of social wisdom to the way we manage our health.

Our mission is a huge challenge because while this PLM health data exists, it’s scattered across various electronic medical record systems and genetic databases that don’t talk to each other. You track steps, chronic symptoms, sleep, and other biometrics with a variety of apps that may not be aware of each other. Even if you brought all of that information together, could you tell what it all means for your health?

We founded K Health because we believe it’s time to change that!

You should have free and easy access to information that can help you manage your health. While others are building symptom checkers powered by textbook rules, our team of mathematicians, doctors, and software engineers are using advanced machine learning techniques to turn mountains of real clinical health data into knowledge that can make us healthier.

Today we’re thrilled to introduce you to our Symptom Checker, an AI personal health assistant powered by people like you. The K in K Health stands for knowledge—because when you know what to expect, you have the power to take control of your health.

Chat with us about your symptoms and we’ll compare you to people like you, revealing how they were diagnosed and treated. At launch, the AI will be able to address most adult primary care conditions, and its capabilities will continue to expand. Each conversation starts with a two-way dialogue similar to the questions your doctor asks during your first diagnostic visit. The goal is to help answer three core questions:

  1. What could it be?
  2. Do I need any tests?
  3. What are all the different ways to treat it?

We save your chats so you can share them with your doctor. In time, your private profile becomes a rich repository of your health history, which you can take with you even if you change doctors or insurance. The more information you share, the more the AI learns about your health. This information will always be kept private.

If you’d like to get involved, start by downloading the app, start a chat, and let us know what you think. We’ll continue to share new developments and insights we learn along the way.

K Health articles are all written and reviewed by MDs, PhDs, NPs, or PharmDs and are for informational purposes only. This information does not constitute and should not be relied on for professional medical advice. Always talk to your doctor about the risks and benefits of any treatment.