5 Healthyish Things, including olive oil and SearchGPT

Rupa Health is right back on my radar with a cool new product called Trends, which lets you upload all your lab results into one place and track your health journey over time.

I’ve always been super bullish on the whole BYOL (bring your own labs) concept. One day—hopefully sooner than later—someone (maybe me?) is going to build the ultimate consumer-driven health platform. Imagine all the employer health benefits platforms that have ever existed, except built for consumers. This place will pull in all your health data, tell the full story of your wellness journey, and then reward you for making better choices and showing progress along the way. To me, this is the future of consumer-first healthcare, and I’m 100% here for it.

With Trends, you’ll need to sign up as a patient first, then manually upload all your past lab results. I gave it a shot and—though there are still quite a few kinks to work out—I can see the vision. Despite having to clean up a few things and fill in some missing info, Trends is exactly what I’m looking for. It shows me the (erp) trends, shifts, and where my results fall in relation to optimal health ranges—all without having to retest everything or do it all in one place. It’s a very cool feature and another win for Tara Viswanathan and her team.

Speaking of startups, Hello Patient just came out of stealth with their generative AI phone agents, which can call and text for basic medical admin needs (think scheduling meetings, answering simple questions, and refilling prescriptions). Patient communications is one of the most time-consuming and inefficient parts of healthcare, and this tool could free up hours of time and cost which should mean more face time with patients. 👍

I’ve tried Hello Patient AI a few times (I’m a minor, early investor) and frankly it’s pretty great. (I recently tried networking AI bot Boardy and was similarly impressed.) It’s arguably better than the service you might get from interacting with a human, which depends on the person and their mood (hard to blame them). But AI? It’s always accurate, consistent, efficient, and polite. 

Hello Patient has built AI to answer and maintain nearly every administrative task question, no matter how simple or complex. If they can achieve scaling this beyond the healthcare providers they’re already working with (and beat out the competition), then we’re looking at a game-changer for healthcare.

And yes, it’s a “ChatGPT wrapper” (a company/service that’s fully built on OpenAI’s GPT to deliver a custom solution). But then again:

And speaking of OpenAI (of which I am a very minor investor), new research suggests (pretty spectacularly, I might add) ChatGPT provides more empathetic, higher quality answers to patient questions than actual doctors. That ChatGPT could have better bedside manners than doctors is pretty amazing, and just makes me all the more bullish about Open AI’s ChatGPT search which just launched for paying users. 

I’m impressed by the Google Chrome extension—and astonished by how competitive this search feature already feels. I’ve been comparing its answers to Google’s AI Overview since it launched, though recently it’s gotten very buggy (can’t imagine why 👀). 

Will generative AI help people search better? I can definitely see a world where people get answers much more quickly and efficiently through AI search for a LOT of queries. But I also think search probably isn't anywhere near the most exciting ways we’ll all use gen AI on a regular basis. 

From an SEO & content standpoint (since, you know, I run an agency that does this), I’m especially excited about how ChatGPT links to sources by default. Phew. I’d argue it actually builds validity (and removes some liability). I think it’s inevitable that more and more search traffic will come from AI sources like this. So If you have a website, now might be the time to start thinking more about AIO (AI Optimization). The good news is advice for how to “rank” highly in gen AI results is consistent: In depth & authoritative content, strong formatting, relevant keywording & phrasing, and quality over quantity. Always skate to where the puck is going, not where it is today.

Last week in West Palm Beach almost every famous person in health (Andrew Huberman, Bryan Johnson, Jillian Michaels, Mark Hyman MD, the list goes on) gathered for Eudēmonia, a new wellness event started by the founders of Wanderlust Festival. 

I was supposed to go but instead ended up being in Vegas for the second weekend in a row (don’t be jealous 😂) to see a rescheduled Adele concert with my wife. I don’t regret it for a second (love my wife, love Adele).

I’m sad to have missed out on what looks to have been a tremendously successful first event. It’s actually super tough to make a great conference. And the best at it (like the amazing Jon Weiner, who just sold HLTH & ViVE—congrats!) really show off why they’re the best. (Another fave event of mine that comes to mind is Michal Fishman’s invite-only Consumer Health Summit). Anyway, the Eudēmonia team clearly knows what they’re doing—great execution, solid lineup, early sponsorships with Function Health, Parsley Health, Sakara, Seed, you name it.

Having a space that brings together all the next-gen, cutting-edge health and wellness solutions is genuinely exciting. So many health things that seemed out-there a decade ago are now commonplace, so it’s fascinating to see how things evolve… and especially so as consumers continue to influence the market by taking more and more ownership over their health and preventative care. Eudēmonia will almost certainly become the place to see what’s next, what’s trending, and what solutions people are into.

Olive oil is super healthy. Just look at this study of almost 100,000 (!) participants, which shows a true correlation between olive oil and longevity. Consuming olive oil regularly helped extend participants’ lives and even reduced the risk of dementia-related death. 

Now this is the part where I give you my favorite olive oil recommendations but… I don’t have any. 🤷‍♂️ We kind of just buy whatever seems legit, which is not ideal but hey! We haven’t optimized everything yet. Do you have a favorite olive oil? I’d love to hear about it. Reply to this email with your best recs and tips for making good decisions in the olive oil aisle and I will be forever grateful.

The Healthyish League

Building something in health? I love to help and love to recommend others who help, too. Here are a few of my carefully selected recommendations, all of which I’ve personally worked with (and some of which I have a formal relationship with): Herman-Scheer (branding & creative), Aequitas Partners (exec & board recruiting), Healthyish Content (my SEO & content agency), Perceptual Advisors (comms & public affairs), Right Side Up/Lantern/Matchnode (growth marketing), Verbose (embedded lifecycle marketing), Titan (exec coaching), and Lakehouse (pre-seed venture capital). Email me anytime for intros.