Heali, a food-as-medicine platform, is currently enrolled in Medicaid fee-for-service in California and has launched a medical nutrition therapy tool. The startup shares exclusively with MedCity News.
Los Angeles-based Heali launched in November with an AI-driven app that provides personalized nutrition plans for more than 200 chronic conditions, including prediabetes, obesity, heart disease, Crohn’s disease, and mental health. are doing. These plans take into account your goals, preferences, weight, activity level, and dietary restrictions.
Healy’s agreement with California’s Medicaid marks the company’s first public healthcare partnership. Commercially, the company has a contract with Blue Shield of California and works with several provider organizations, including Boston Heart Diagnostics. Heali founder and CEO Kyle Dardashti said the company aims to work with more Medicaid programs in the future.
“Government and the public sector are recognizing the value of medical nutrition therapy, which not only has a major impact on metabolic diseases such as type 2 diabetes and prediabetes, but also far more broadly. Dardashti said in the paper. interview. “They now cover a full range of conditions, not just gastrointestinal conditions such as Crohn’s disease and irritable bowel syndrome, but also neurological conditions. These conditions are traditionally covered by public payer systems. It was never done.”
Heali also announced a medical nutrition therapy tool available in the app, giving patients and healthcare providers access to a library of evidence-based dietary recommendations categorized by symptom. The company conducted a systematic review of 239 conditions and collected research on evidence-based nutritional protocols for those conditions. The user can select one or more conditions and view all dietary protocols that are effective for that condition. You can also review the research yourself.
“This is of great value to healthcare professionals who are treating multiple different conditions and perhaps treating polychronic patients with a variety of conditions. [the provider] is not an expert,” Dardashti said. “Secondly, [it’s valuable] Patients can see it for themselves and have the tools to adhere to dietary recommendations. ”
This tool was previously available only for internal use by Heali nutritionists. Now available to any patient or provider on the Heali app. It’s free for a limited time, but Dardashti said there will be a paywall in the near future.
He added that Healy aims to prove that food can be an effective tool in the prevention, treatment and management of disease.
“The way we do that is by leading the research, ensuring that the diets we recommend to our patients are backed by evidence, and then taking that research to our patients to help them improve. It’s about winning trust,” Dardashti declared.
Photo: fcafotodigital, Getty Images
