New Delhi: It was her own struggle with healthcare that shaped Pranitha Patil’s future. In her 20s, the Indian-American entrepreneur was diagnosed with PCOS and pre-diabetes. But the US healthcare system was ill-equipped to address the problems she was facing. Then, while pursuing a master’s degree in design engineering at Harvard University, an idea struck her.
She dropped out of the graduate programme and set out to rebuild the healthcare system with a comprehensive healthcare platform: Function Health. That’s when she met her co-founder and CEO, Jonathan Swerdlin.
“I was like this product needs to exist… I ended up dropping out of Harvard early to bring the company to life,” Patil told Entrepreneur. “As co-founders, we have different backgrounds, but we were all driven by giving people the opportunity to own their health.”
Function Health was co-founded by Patil, Swerdlin, Dr Mark Hyman, Daniel Swerdlin, Mike Nemke, and Seth Weisfeld in 2022.
The company is now valued at $2.5 billion. The platform provides access to 160 lab tests, advanced MRI, CT imaging, and AI-powered insights, so that users Better understand their test results and are equipped to take the next step.
The platform’s annual membership costs $365. If the same tests were to be purchased independently, they would cost about $15,000.
“The typical annual physical gives you a snapshot of your health at one point in time. Function offers people the most cutting-edge information and it’s ongoing,” Patil said.
Patil didn’t set out to create a huge platform. Initially, her goal was to provide blood and urine tests. And like every new idea, the challenge was to convince the investors of her vision.
It was Patil’s and her co-founders’ ability to communicate their vision that impressed the investors. And that’s how it took off.
“Our vision was to reach 8 billion people as quickly as possible. That has been the throughline for us since day one. AI is helping us achieve that,” Patil added.
What Function Health offers
The platform offers an AI chatbot that helps decipher test results. Function also has a medical intelligence lab that gathers data from various sources such as labs, images, wearable devices, and past medical reports to create a complete snapshot of a person.
“That information is summarized in a way that the average person on the street can actually do something about it. Since that hasn’t been done before, the only way to do it is with AI,” Patil said.
The platform combines AI with technology and medicine to deliver personalised and preventive health care for its members.
“We have got researchers, scientists, clinicians, coders and people who really understand AI working to bring technology and medicine together and make it as clean, accessible and actionable as possible for somebody today.”
(Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)
Also read: Tom Alter’s last film Dial 1975 releasing 9 yrs after his death. It’s set in the Emergency