Christopher Turner, Co-Founder and CEO of HealthBook+

Welcome to the podcast Above the Cloud: Stories from the Boardroom. In every episode, we interview business leaders who are navigating the complex world of B2B marketing. Whether you're trying to grow revenue, swoop into a new market, or launch new products, we promise you've landed in the right spot. And now, your host, Richard Bird. >> Welcome to the podcast. Today, we have a very special guest. We have Chris Turner, the CEO of Healthbook Plus today. So, Chris, welcome to the show. >> Awesome, Richard.

So happy to be here. >> All right. Well, we're happy to have you on. You you flew into town for this from Colorado, huh? >> Yeah, it's a little warmer here. >> Oh, man. >> Yeah. It's kind of interesting. Where I live in Montro, Colorado, this time of year, half the city has Texas license plates. Must have something to do with like 80° versus 103. >> Yeah. Well, I grew up here, so I didn't really realize what everybody's talking about when you're like, "It's so humid there." I knew it was hot, but I stayed a summer in Colorado and I had to fly back in August.

And soon as I got off out of the plane and got into the concourse, I felt exactly what people were talking about. I was like, "Yes, this is it. This is the, you know, welcome back home." Well, Chris, we have a tradition on the show to ask our clients about their spirit bird. So, if your company was a bird, what kind of bird would you be? >> I love it. The question doesn't have anything to do with your last name, does it? >> Maybe a little. >> I love it. So, what I I thought about this question because I think it's a great question.

You really kind of if you do it right, you think a little deep about it. And what I came up with is Healthbook Plus, we're really like an owl, >> you know, where we help people through the darkness, you know, like owls they can see at night or I don't know if they see your however they they function very well at night. >> Yeah. >> And uh you know, people are often lost when it comes to their healthcare journey and what to do. And HealthBook Plus really helps cut through the darkness and gets people to understand what their next best health action is, you know.

And then in doing a little research on owls, I I found out that in ancient times, they were seen uh kind of like a sherpa as a guide. And HealthBook Plus, we really are that that sherpa, that guide to both clinicians as well as consumers along their healthcare journey. >> Man, that's a great answer. What a cool bird, too. I mean, I think owls are like the coolest >> and at the best thing if you've been walking in the woods and you kind of hear like little you look up and this owl ripped over the top.

It's just cool. >> It is cool. I see them even we live in the city but I'll see them in like on our dog walks and everything else and they're they're just such a I love to see them when you're out and about. You know, I love the way you described how HealthBook Plus is a sherpa for patients. Why don't you tell us a little bit about HealthBook Plus and you know what you guys are all about there? >> Yeah, I love it. So we launched in in April and what we do is we help people understand their next best health action.

We give clinicians a much better picture of what's going on with their patient population both at any point of service whether that's a different health system, their clinic, other clinics and we combine that with what we call the point of living information. So that's everything that happens outside of the office. And so the way that we do that is we bring into account all of the data that comes from any of your electronic health record information and then we combine that with like wearable data, smart devices, things like glucose monitors, scales, genetics, daily inputed health metrics as well as journaling.

And we could take all that structured and unstructured data, combine it together, and we put AI on top of it. So, we've got a Gentic AI system and her name's Paige. And Paige can help people understand all of that different type of data, whether structured or unstructured, and give insights to clinicians and to people. >> Wow. Lou, you know, that sounds like the perfect application for AI. >> It is. >> You know, AI is one of those buzzwords that now that everybody's talking about it and, you know, some people are pretenders and some people really mean it.

But, you know, you think about all that structured and unstructured data that goes into it. You know, think about how much information is in your genetics. Think about all the the continuous glucose monitoring, all those data points you have there. Can you imagine having to go through all that as a doctor? >> No. Even like, you know, now your watches give so much valuable information. But until now, nobody's been really able to truly interpret it because it's so much information. >> Wow. I don't know about you, but uh my doctor's pretty busy guy and it's you know I don't know if this is still true but one data point that I heard was that doctors spend on average of two minutes with each patient.

>> Exactly. And and the thing I don't know if you've been to the doctor lately but oftent times you know doctors should be having this type of a conversation but oftentimes they're like this and typing on the computer and trying to talk at the same time not really paying attention to what's going on with the patient. >> Yeah. And I love the name Paige. That's great. It makes everything a lot more approachable. And how does Paige interact with the patient and how does a doctor get that information? >> Yeah.

So, I'll back up just a little bit since you brought up Paige. Like, it kind of came together really interesting. So, I think it's a it's a cool story. So, we working with the team trying to come up with a name for Paige and we are a personalized AI guidance and engagement platform. And someone's like, well, let's just take the letters from that and it makes page with an AI in the middle of it. And I'm like, oh, and it works like page in a book. So, like the whole thing just came together really cool.

>> This is a perfect name. >> Yeah, I I love it. So, I'm just so proud of it. The team just did such an amazing job. But what's really great is Paige does phenomenal things for consumers in that she can really help you understand your next health action. So, I'll give you an example. I had food poisoning a couple of months ago, which by the way, I don't recommend for anybody. And >> it's not as fun as everybody says. >> No. And uh all I did was put in my journal diarrhea, vomiting, fever, had tuna for dinner.

And then I looked at my insides version on HealthBook Plus and Paige came in with, hey, if you really need to see a doctor, don't forget about Teddoc and that's who we use as a company for tele medicine. So we're always trying to drive people the least expensive, most accessible modality. I didn't. I felt okay. But then the next thing Paige told me was because of your active medical conditions, food poisoning can affect those adversely. You should learn more. So of course I clicked on the button and learn more.

And Paige said food poisoning from tuna. Gave me the scientific name which I'm not going to try to pronounce. And then down said here's the typical symptoms which of course I had all of them. Gave me some tips on how to stay hydrated and feel a little bit better. But then she got ultra personalized and she said because of these three active medical conditions if these two symptoms get worse then it's time to contact your doctor. >> Oh wow. >> And then lastly here's how you can avoid food poisoning in the future.

And I was like this is so helpful. And I tell that story and show the screenshots to a lot of doctors and they're like oftentimes that would have been a phone call to me. >> Yeah. >> Now Paige can help. And that's not necessarily what they want to, you know, what time of the day was was it the real Nobody gets food poisoning at three o'clock in the afternoon. >> No, no, never. Exactly. You know, so it' always be a late night call. But I'll tell you, it's like every day we find something new that she can do.

I was talking with a doctor a couple days ago and she said, "Hey, Chris, when are you going to put guided breathing into your platform?" >> Oh, wow. >> And I started thinking about that. I'm like, "Let me ask Paige." Hey Paige, can you build me a five minute guided breathing exercise routine? And in 30 seconds, I had my guided breathing. I'm like, wow. Well, she already does it. This is wonderful. So, it's like all of these things. I was talking with a a guy that uh works with Kroger. >> He's like, "It'd be really great if Paige could build like recipes and shopping lists." So, I asked her and she nailed it.

She said, "Hey, because you have rheumatoid arthritis, you need an anti-inflammatory diet and a heart-healthy diet because you're over 50. Here's what you should eat for the next 3 days, and here's your shopping list." >> Wow. >> In a matter of minutes. >> Isn't that amazing? >> I guess how you structure your data is that, you know, she knows exactly, you know, there's not extraneous data based off of your specific conditions. >> Exactly. And I'll just elaborate a little bit more on that. When we pull that electronic health record data, it's super messy.

it has a ton of holes. So, we have to work with our consumers to fill those holes in. But the other thing we found is at least 65% of our members have data that's inaccurate that comes over from electronic health records. So, it kind of makes sense. So, health systems built electronic health records for billing. They didn't build them to improve patient care, >> right? And so often, I don't know if you've ever seen on your bill, like I went in for a simple sinus infection and now all of a sudden I've got these terms that I don't know, but it's like three or four levels higher than the sinus infection.

Well, that's what gets put in your electronic medical record. >> Yeah. >> So, we encourage all of our members frequently when we get new data in to doublech checkck that information. Then we allow them to flag it and say that it's not accurate. So, then that way then Paige doesn't pick that up as an accurate instance or medical record. That is really because I've seen that there's a lot of human error in those things. Even the the automated lab results that come in, you know, I'm like that seems questionable to me and it probably is accurate because I think the sensitivity of those machines is accurate, but maybe it's, you know, I wasn't fasting the day I took that and so my cholesterol is higher than usual because I had bacon for breakfast.

>> Exactly. >> Or whatever it is, you know, and so being able to, you know, customize that data, you know, for accuracy sake makes a lot of sense. >> Yep. Exactly. And you know, I was talking earlier about that whole the way the doctors interact. Uh we've enhanced page with some other AI technologies like an AI scribe >> and some workflow tools so that clinicians can put Healthbook Plus seamless into their workflow because you oftent times primary care doctors have about eight minutes to work with a patient.

>> Yeah. >> And that's just not enough to really get to know folks. So what we've done is we've added these workflow tools that basically the clinician can just before they see the patient log into the healthbook plus and page will summarize what's happened with that individual since they saw them last. So you immediately get this great picture of what's going on. And then the doctors walk in the room, they hit record on the AI scribe, have a meaningful conversation like this, not their back turned to them typing on a computer.

And then when they're done, they hit end. The data gets pushed into the electronic health record from the visit, however form is that the doctor or the clinician wants that to be in. But then what's really cool is a lay version of that gets pushed up into HealthBook Plus >> and then Paige now knows what happened at that visit and can keep people on their treatment plans or whatever was discussed there, remind the consumer what should be going on and how they should best take care of their health based upon what that clinician's observations and treatment plan was.

>> That is amazing. You know what? I'm thinking about the use case for that as like my mother-in-law. She's in her 80s. She's the healthiest person and even for somebody in her 80s and she's got memory problems and she gets stressed when she goes to the doctor on top of that. >> Like most people. >> Yeah, that's right. She doesn't remember. And even me, I'll come home from the doctor and my wife's like, "What'd you guys talk about?" I'm like, "I only gave you a prescription." Right. >> Right. >> Well, if just think about it, like when you're sick and you go to the doctor's office, it's difficult.

you're like having a hard time functioning anyways, much less trying to remember all of these complex things that they're talking about. >> Yeah, doctors sometimes can struggle with that. I think they get dinged unnecessarily for their, you know, sometimes their bedside practice, but they're busy. They've got a lot to do. They're thinking about the last person and the next person and the medical systems really, you know, they're trying to optimize their efficiency and that's squeezes me through people through as they can.

It's not always the doctor's fault that it's like that, but having a tool like Paige, I could see where it'd be massive help for both the clinician and the the patient. And that's right. So then you can go back as the patient and go, this is my use case of uh you know, I went to the doctor, my wife, what they say. It's like I could go, well, I don't know. Let me go back and look. Oh, you know what? He said no more bacon for breakfast. >> I probably wouldn't tell my wife that. Keep that between me. >> We'll keep that one secret.

Well, that sounds like you guys have built an amazing tool over there and uh how long you been working on it? >> So, we've been working on it since um really early 21 and and building it out and then like I said, we just launched in in April. But I'll tell you, the thing that warms my heart is hearing all of these consumer and patient stories and how Paige has helped them. It just it's it's so just mind-blowing and it's just like >> I I'll tell you, it just makes the work that we're doing so much more powerful.

That's got to be rewarding to hear from the patients, you know, that they are, you know, what they're, you know, how it's changed their life. I'm sure that this is the kind of thing that could save people's lives. >> Totally. And I mean, even some of our employees, it's great to hear like their stories. And I'll share an example. We've got one employee that's fairly new and she lost her father a couple days into starting to work with us and she's been telling us that, you know, Paige has really helped me through a lot of this grief and being able to try to figure out and function every day and you know, we never thought about boy, Paige can certainly help with grief as well as, you know, the regular medical type things.

>> Totally new use case. But if you think about it, if your body is perfectly healthy, but you're depressed, that just uh that's going to not make your body perfectly healthy for very long. >> For sure. >> They It's all so interrelated. What an amazing use case that you guys didn't even think about. No. You know, >> it's like these things just keep popping up. It's just so cool. >> Well, it sounds like you guys have built something so really powerful. It's interesting because you've mentioned the the consumer, you've mentioned the clinician.

Who's your target audience as you go out to sell this and bring it to market? >> Yeah. So, we've been very laser focused on membership based clinicians. So, that would be things like your concierge, docs, and your direct pay primary care. >> Y >> and um that was our first market we went into and we did it very purposeful because we haven't built all the gamification and other components into our platform. So, we figured patients that are paying $100ish a month to go have an access to the doctor are going to be more engaged in their health.

Yeah. Yeah. >> And therefore be more engaged in the technology that we roll out. And so I' I'd say that Hypothesis worked. We've got really amazing engagement with the platform. And then now we've gradually started to expand out to working with employers and um even a couple small payers. >> Yeah, you mentioned the payers. I don't think people who have not are not used to having to sell and and market into the healthcare space. >> So painful. >> Oh my gosh. So many masters to serve and you know such a complex buying environment.

Part of what we talk about in on our podcast a lot is complex buying environments. I don't think that there is one more complex than the life sciences space because you've got >> I totally agree with you. >> The person who uses it is a different than the person who prescribes it, which is different from the person who's going to pay for it. And they all three are totally misaligned. >> Exactly. >> And I think also a big challenge we see is selling to doctors can be challenging. >> Well, like you said, they're busy first off.

uh oftentimes they're not uh very business-minded, you know, they're very clinical minded. >> Yeah. >> So, they struggle sometimes with business components. And so, yeah, it's just it's definitely a challenge. But I'll tell you when they have that aha moment, like, whoa, wait a sec, Paige is going to save me all of this time, like this just makes sense. >> Yeah, I can imagine that. And I think that was one of the smart things that I was thinking as you were talking about it at the beginning was that it works into their current workflows.

>> Correct. >> Because like, okay, I've got this amazing offering that I'm going to give you and it's going to make you save a ton of money and it's going to help you be better at your job, but you just have to change the way you work. Conversation's over. >> Exactly. But, you know, you make a really great point because most clinicians, that's what they were told when health systems rolled out electronic health records. >> Yeah. Hey, it's going to save you time. It's going to be great. And they were sold a bill of goods.

Like I always say, healthc care is the only environment where when you add a new technology, you have to add FTES. And that's been our history. >> Yeah. >> And but with Agentic AI, I think we can, you know, make some naysayers and change the tune a little bit with what's been going on in our industry. What would you say is the biggest obstacle or biggest hurdle to adoption that you guys are are seeing out? Are these things that are so good and almost too good to be true sometimes can be even harder to sell than things that are that are, you know, you go, well, there's some trade-offs.

I get it. >> You're right. And it does so much. >> Yeah. >> That people don't understand. So, I would say our biggest struggle has been getting the consumer to understand the one thing that they need to do with HealthBook Plus. And similar with with the clinician. So if we get a clinician to start working with patients, say, "Okay, all my diabetic patients, all I'm going to tell them to do is to journal every single day for a week and then see what the insights come up with. And then if they want to continue journal, great.

If they don't, that's okay." Because most people once they see those insights and how personalized they are, they'll want to continually journal. Yeah. >> But it's really driving down and getting people to find that one nugget that's super personalized for them >> so then that they they want to use it because it just it does so much. That's that's one of our biggest challenges. >> Yeah, I can imagine. You know, it's like it does this and that and this and that. You got to really hone in on what that the things that really people are going to value the most.

But the problem with that is your patients are going to all value >> different things. I'm a type 1 diabetic and so you know the things that I would value and that are probably way different than you know a friend of mine. She is you you touched on it earlier healthcare enthusiast. >> Yeah. >> She is all about it. like she is perfectly, you know, tip-top health, very fit, all these things, but she's got a glucose monitor. And I was like, "Oh, you're diabetic, too." And she's like, "No, I'm just curious about what my glucose looks like throughout the day." I'm like, "That's so weird." >> You know, it's amazing, though, because it really brings the point of personalization.

So, I'll give you an example. We've got a chief medical officer that is the head of the lifestyle medical board, actually, international lifestyle medical board. So, she gives all the tests to all of the doctors all across the world uh on lifestyle medicine as a specialty so that you can get board certified in it. >> And then uh we've got a pediatrician that's on on our medical staff, too. And they're both pretty similar age. And we stuck a glucose monitor on both of them for a couple months. And uh the the pediatrician, she's Asian, very fit, exercises a ton, but she's borderline diabetic.

M >> so the two of them we go to dinner they'd have almost the same thing and look at the glucose monitor and things are doing much different. So the pediatrician if she has a glass of wine and then eats her glucose stays lower. >> Yeah. >> Our chief medical officer if she has a glass of wine it spikes her glucose. >> Wow. this whole concept of having things personalized for you that is going to make the difference in how we practice medicine anymore because this blanket statement of hey you should avoid this doesn't necessarily compute with every single person >> sure we've seen that like forever right remember >> for sure >> George Burns you know >> drank smoke cigars non-stop and he was I don't even know how he was in his hundreds when he died >> and then you get people who do everything right and you hear about him dying of a heart attack on jog, you know, you go, "How's this possible?" >> We've been hearing the promise of of personalized medicine for a long time.

It's been a buzzword. People have been talking about personalized medicine. You talk about how you think Paige can really unlock that. >> You're right. We've been trying to get to this point, but we've not had the power or the technology to really truly pull that off. And the cool thing with Paige is she does kind of like my example there with the food poisoning. She teases out the pieces that are personalized to you >> to really help you focus on your health. And the more data that we have about you, how you're feeling, how you're journaling, your daily health metrics, if we can stick some genetics in there, um all of those things make Paige smarter to delivering that personalized guidance.

>> Yeah. >> You know, and then of course we always it's AI. AI hallucinates. It's not perfect today, you know. So we always want to back that up with a clinician whether that's one of our clinicians that's building out the library for for Paige or whether that's your clinician that you work with every day. >> Yeah. Oh that's definitely something you know we've seen just using large language models you know for our work and and all that but and sometimes you get something is far more brilliant than I would have come up with my own and then other times you go this is crazy.

This doesn't make any sense. You're hallucinating. Yeah, I think you I think you made that stat up. It just doesn't seem quite right. >> I s like what was your source for that? And then it comes back with some BS answers like well you know based on just other you know just general things you know that's not that's not going to cut it. Wow. What an adventure you guys are on there and how promising all this is just transforming medicine and how medicine gets delivered today. And I think that's, you know, you hear about AI and and all these things and there are people who are real pessimist on AI and there's people who are like the biggest optimist in the world on it and you know it's going to create this whole utopia and no it's going to create a dystopian you know future and and all these things.

But when hearing things like this you know you go yeah that is that is the kind of thing that is going to create a a utopia type environment where people can really thrive and and improve people's lives. >> Yeah. Exactly. And the thing that I think is so special about what we're doing that just really hasn't been done before is everybody says they put the consumer in the middle or the individual in the middle and they really don't. You know what we're doing is we're switching that paradigm so that on your phone you have all of your healthcare information.

You've got access to some guidance and you're the one in control. If you don't want to share some of that information with your clinician, you don't have to. >> Yeah. >> And uh that's what I think's really different. We've always built systems for the the health care, hospital systems, for doctors, or for the insurance companies. We've never built something that truly says, "Let's put the power where it should be." And that's into the consumer's hand. >> Yeah. You know, they've tried that before. And like My Chart, I don't want to slag on, you know, anybody that might be a competitor, but it's really pretty useless, >> right?

I mean, it is. And the biggest challenge, right, you have My Chart. They give you access to some of your data. >> Yeah. But then it doesn't talk with the other clinics or health systems that you've gone to. I mean, and I'll tell you like our data gathering process is really four-fold. We start with bringing information from the national health record database, which um is called the TEKA or QEN. So, we can pull that stuff on behalf of the patient doctor relationship and then we put it in the patient's health book.

That oftentimes has holes. So then the next level is the patient can then authenticate through some of our aggregators that we plug into their patient portal credentials like the my charts of the world >> and then give us access to pull the data from electronic health record and store for them in healthbook. >> Oh wow. >> Then the third way is we've got some direct integrations into electronic health records. And then lastly, we've got a team that sends faxes out to some of these smaller clinics that don't participate in any of these data gathering processes so that we can truly get that whole health record for the individual.

But that's how difficult it is to get most of the information. >> Sure. >> And then um you and I, we aren't spring chickens. So we're come from the age of before electronic health records. I remember when I was 16, I had an e knee surgery. So I just added that to my health book. But there's no electronic medical records that have that information. Yeah. Oh man. Yeah. I gota I had a lot of emergency room visits that are never recorded. >> Oh man. Well, thanks for giving us the overview of Healthbook Plus. This it sounds so exciting what you guys are up to over there.

Tell me, how did you wind up being the CEO of Healthbook Plus? Were you when you were talking about your younger days of uh you know the knee surgery and all that stuff, did you think you were going to be uh the CEO of a of a AIdriven uh health information company? >> No. But what's crazy, I've had a very blessed and fun journey in this uh thing of life. I started life out as a corporate pilot. >> So, I just figured I'm like flying's my thing. That's what I'm going to be doing. And uh then I realized that you know what?

It's pretty boring. >> So, I got into healthcare. And like you spoke about earlier, there's nothing boring about healthcare. Boy, there's like all these things you have to navigate and it's kind of crazy. So, you know, I've had this uh really blessed journey in life and it's been really fun. But I'll tell you like um I've done a couple of worked with a couple companies like HealthGrades where we grew this little startup from you know basically about seven million in revenue to 250 million in revenue and then spun it out and then uh a couple other uh digital health companies like that.

But I was working for a AI symptom checker company out of Poland uh running all of their commercial business. And so we happen to be working with one of our sales guys in Greece and I met these two guys. One's a shipping owner, another one's a GI doctor. And what they're trying to do is build a solution that had all of a patient's information in the palm of their hand. Because for the shipping guy, >> his big problem was when a seafarer is out in the middle of the ocean and he's sick, >> it's really difficult to get him treatment.