OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Arianna Huffington announced last week their plans for an AI-powered personalized health coach to help people meet their fitness and behavioral health goals, with the promise of transforming the health care space.
That’s news to the founders of Thumos Care, a recently launched AI-powered “health optimization platform” that claims to address the issues that Altman and Huffington said their new app will help solve.
“They’re talking about a product that will come. We have one that’s already there,” Dr. Maryam Baqir, a co-founder of Thumos, told Newsweek.
Baqir, a primary-care provider in New York, started Thumos with her partner, Shan Rizvi. They wanted to create something that would help fix the “sick care system,” as she called it.
AI is increasingly being leaned on in the healthtech space, with Thumos Care among those leveraging the technology along with the likes of OpenAI.
Thumos Care
“We wait for too long before we take action as a system in general,” Baqir said in an interview. “There are so many things that are so highly preventable, if not completely preventable. You can prevent so many complications but the system in general doesn’t really incentivize preventive care or proactive care.”
When the Covid pandemic hit in 2020, Baqir said these issues “really came to surface even more.” She saw early on that many of the people getting sick from the virus and dying “regardless of age” were those with underlying conditions like high blood pressure, obesity and heart problems.
“Most of these can be managed in such a better manner than people are in general,” Baqir said.
Baqir and Rizvi’s bootstrapped startup is meant to bridge the gap between doctors’ visits and ensure a better understand of people’s individual health status and future trajectories.
Thumos Care, which has been public facing for a few months, claims to take the guess work out of people’s individual health routines. Instead of watching “hours of podcasts,” Rizvi told Newsweek the app is more efficient and comprehensive.
The app shows a dashboard on an individual’s biomarkers “so that anytime you sign in, you can see where your health is in a snapshot essentially,” Baqir said.
People upload their bloodwork, and instead of the numbers a lab report may generate, Thumos breaks down the meaning of the results in plain English and flags potential problem areas.
“Rather than throwing a bunch of complicated names out there with numbers, we show you the nine systems of your body, each of these systems have these functions and these functions are green, red, or yellow.”
Rizvi and Baqir wanted to fix the “sick care system” in the U.S.
Thumos Care
Users are then able to have a conversation —via text or voice — with an AI-powered bot about their results. Questions like “should I be concerned about my cholesterol levels?” and “what can I do to better my muscle growth potential?” trigger real-time, individualized responses.
The AI dissect the data and share insights from what a specific point means to meals, sleep or exercise routines that can help “better” the data in the future.
If a patient goes to the doctor and is told they have pre-diabetes, Baqir said the doctor may provide recommendations and say to check back in a few months. Thumos comes in to support the patient during that “in-between” time.
Sam Altman, Chief Executive Officer of OpenAI, arrives at the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference on July 9, 2024 in Sun Valley, Idaho. Altman recently partnered with Arianna Huffington’s Thrive Health on an AI-powered behavioral health platform.
Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images
“Just my conversation with that person is not enough,” Baqir said. “We need re-enforcement, a plan, a structure that works for them.”
Thumos Care, which is currently monetized on a pay-what-you-can model, is envisioned to give patients more of a say in their healthcare journeys, Baqir said.
“Most patients come for their annual physicals…Between doctor visits, what’s happening in your life on a regular basis – that is the idea of Thumos Care where I want people to take the agency of their own health.”
In contrast with Altman and Huffington’s Thrive AI Health, which is trained on the medical data and daily routines that users choose to upload, Thumos claims to take a more hands-off approach in the name of privacy.
“For behavior change, we don’t need to track your user data,” Rizvi said. “We don’t need to do any of that.”
Thumos has also partnered with a group called Delve to ensure the app is in compliance with HIPAA guidelines.
The founders took issue with Thrive AI Health’s strategy of constantly tracking users throughout their days to give them “nudges” to change behaviors.
“We disagree with that approach,” Rizvi said. “Ask your mom, nobody has ever succeeded in getting somebody to do something by harassing them to do it.”
Newsweek reached out to OpenAI for comment but did not receive an immediate response.
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Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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