Founder Story: Interview with Tanvi Abbhi, co-founder of female-founded health tech startup Veta Health

Welcome back to another edition of the Startup Spotlight, our weekly series where we get into the minds of some of the world’s most successful and inspiring startup founders and CEOs to help future and aspiring entrepreneurs navigate the startup journey and help them become successful business founders.

During the interview, we learn about the brief history of their companies, their mission, their products and services, value proposition, and lessons they learned along the way. In this second interview, we’re excited to speak with Tanvi Abbhi, co-founder of female-founded health tech startup Veta Health.

Thank you, Tanvi for doing the interview. We would like to know more about Veta Health, what led you to start Veta Health, your early struggles, successes, and words of wisdom that you would like to pass on to others. Without further ado, let’s start with the quick history of Veta Health.

Tech Startups: Give us a brief history of your company, founders, mission, value proposition, etc.

Veta Health was founded on the simple premise that patients deserve more than what traditional healthcare offers. We transform the reactive, expensive and opaque healthcare system into a personally curated and proactive patient experience. Our accessible digital platform enables patients to connect smart devices like blood pressure cuffs and glucometers to monitor the status of chronic illnesses and connect with their primary care providers quickly and cost-effectively. Our mission is to build a world where all people have access to the technology that allows patients to reach their full potential for health.

Our solution improves treatment adherence and long-term health outcomes for patients. We work with healthcare providers across the United States and Europe to provide interactive, personalized Care Pathways tailored to fit the needs of patients managing chronic conditions. With Veta Health, patients can better manage their health while providing valuable data to drive physicians and healthcare organizations to improve clinical outcomes.

Tech Startups: What led you to start Veta Health and what is the history behind the name of the company? What has the journey been like so far?

I’ve known my Co-Founder Nora Zetsche for more than 20 years. She runs her own clinical practice and was very attuned to a prevalent issue in our industry – the lack of technology resources available to patients. We were driven to create a 21st-century healthcare experience guided by two primary principles: facilitating greater transparency in the care journey  – 90% of which happens outside of the hospital or doctor’s office – and giving patients the tools to become active participants in their health.

We chose the name “Veta” because it means intelligent, and that’s what we are bringing to the healthcare industry:

Healthcare is a complex industry due to the regulatory environment and payment landscape. We have navigated through evolving reimbursement schemes and the gradual shift to value-based or outcome-based care; and now, with the firestorm that was Covid, we have moved into an era where patients and providers are more accepting of remote care technologies.

Tech Startups: What does your company do and what makes it stand out?

Veta Health’s remote care ecosystem delivers clinically-validated Care Pathways that monitor and manage patients’ chronic conditions from anywhere. Through a combination of patient-reported data, wearable devices, and active/passive monitoring, we offer the first-ever solution that brings patients’ real-world experiences into their care narrative. This allows for more informed clinical experiences, better self-management, and in time, better health outcomes.

Our technology puts an end to the “app overdose” by offering comorbid disease management in one simple platform experience. From cellular-enabled device integration to the management of patient intake and enrollment, our end-to-end solution enables healthcare providers to provide care where and when it’s needed most. Our provider dashboard overlays patient-generated health data with clinical data from electronic health records (EHRs) to better understand the patient context and adjust treatments as needed. This is all done without clinician workflow interruption; we have first-line monitoring services, clinical intelligence for escalation care, and comprehensive data insights – not just raw data – reducing the time that a provider spends manually servicing each patient.

Additionally, we offer remote patient monitoring (RPM) modules that are compatible with RPM devices – such as cellular-enabled blood pressure cuffs, wireless scales, glucometers, etc. – and aligned with reimbursable Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) billing codes and value-based care (VBC) arrangements.

Tech Startups: What’s your secret sauce?

Medicine has followed a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach for too long. We believe a patient’s experience must be tailored to meet them where they are, which is why we focus on personalized disease management.

At the outset, we take a population-level approach to standardize care. We utilize tools that auto triage patients into an appropriate digital experience, which includes preferred medium of outreach (voice, SMS, app, web app) and clinical severity for patients that require more intensive monitoring.

Once enrolled, we then optimize their healthcare journey based on clinical and patient-reported parameters. Patients receive personalized guidance along with condition-specific Care Pathways that allow for education, access to resources, shared goal setting, and ongoing goal evaluations designed to further personalize the patient experience. Our Care Pathways automatically adjust to each patient to ensure long-term engagement and adherence based on what they need the most, taking into account their medical history, digital phenotype, and other patient parameters.

Tech Startups: The smartest move we’ve made so far and the biggest mistake we’ve made so far:

Authenticity is something we have taken pride in since day one and something our customers value in us. It continues to be an important aspect of our company culture and how we interact with our clients.

The biggest mistake we have made as an organization was trying to formulate individual solutions to appease a broad range of stakeholders. We spent our first couple of years building different products to fit each client’s needs and from that experience, learned that there is a greater need for standardization in our product and organization.

Tech Startups: Which leading entrepreneur, business leader, or executive would you most want to work in your corner? (Be specific, and explain why)

Karen Lynch, CEO of CVS Health. Her vast experience in healthcare and now leading one of the most innovative companies focused on access and health outcomes would be a tremendous asset to Veta Health and our mission.

Tech Startups: The biggest thing we look for when hiring is…

Grit, adaptability, integrity, and high standards are at the core of our hiring efforts. Our culture is built on personal accountability. We have found that these traits are critical to a person’s success within our organization and play a crucial role in setting our company’s path forward.

Tech Startups: What’s the one piece of advice you’d give to other entrepreneurs just starting out?

Surround yourself with experts. As ambitious founders who were perhaps a bit “green” when we started Veta Health, we would have benefited immensely from bringing on domain experts earlier in our journey who could have accelerated our product-market fit.

Tech Startups: Looking back at your career, what would you have done differently when starting out?

In the type of work that we do, comfort with ambiguity is very important and it’s a muscle I would have flexed more frequently and earlier on if I had the chance to do it over again.

Tech Startups: Is there any other thing you would like us to know?

It’s no secret that the past century has experienced enormous medical and technological advancements. It’s also no secret that because of this, life expectancy has increased worldwide. In a perfect world, all individuals would benefit from these advances and have an equal opportunity to reach their full potential for health – but this is not the case. Reality falls far short of this optimistic goal.

We believe in empowering patients to play bigger, more informed roles in their healthcare journeys. We want to make patient input a part of a broader care narrative that accounts for the status of that person’s condition and overall health at all times – from the initial diagnosis to long-term disease monitoring and management. We also want to make this convenience more accessible to everyone living with chronic conditions – regardless of age, tech-savviness, or socioeconomic status.

Tech Startups: Tanvi, thank you for your time.

We hope the information Tanvi shares with us helps inform other entrepreneurs who are looking to make an impact in the business world.