Intro: [00:00:04] We’ll come back to the Startup Showdown podcast, where we discuss pitching, funding and scaling startups. Join us as we interview winners, mentors and judges of the monthly 120,000 pitch competition powered by Panoramic Ventures. We also discuss the latest updates in software Web three, health care, tech, fintech and more. Now sit tight as we interview this week’s guest and their journey through entrepreneurship.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:39] Lee Kantor here another episode of Startup Showdown podcast, and this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor Panoramic Ventures. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on Startup Showdown, we have Shawn Smith with One True Health. Welcome.

Shawn Smith: [00:00:59] Thanks so much, Lee. It’s great to be here. Thank you.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:01] Well, before we get too far into things, can you share a little bit about one true health? How are you serving folks?

Shawn Smith: [00:01:08] You bet. Well, once your health, we are a virtual we’re a technology enabled clinical services company, and we’re based in Austin, Texas. And we focus on providing virtual first preventative care through delightful services and intelligent software, primarily focused on Medicare eligible seniors suffering from chronic conditions.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:26] So what does that kind of. Can you share a little bit about your vision of virtual first preventative care? What is that what does that kind of mean for the for everybody?

Shawn Smith: [00:01:35] Absolutely. Well, it’s a couple of facts to throw at you here. First is chronic and acute conditions are really the nation’s number one health problem. 90% of the annual spend is related to some form of management of chronic or acute conditions like hypertension, diabetes, cancer, heart disease. And that really, really affects our seniors. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services recognize the problem. And so for 43 million Medicare eligible seniors, 65 and older, that suffer from two or more chronic conditions, they created a monthly wellness checkup program, but less than 1.5% of eligible seniors participate in this. And that’s a problem because chronic conditions require additional attention. And especially with this fact, 40% of American seniors haven’t seen a physician in person or through telehealth since the start of COVID. So we literally have a silver tsunami of problems headed to our health system with with the management of of these chronic conditions. And that’s really where we focus is in the era of COVID when people weren’t seeing their their doctors. And really since Covid’s waned, they still aren’t on a regular basis going back and seeing their clinicians. We need to provide a virtual first approach to give the seniors the information they need to to get healthy and to stay healthy.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:50] And ironically, so there’s programs in place to encourage them to have this kind of engagement. But they’re just kind of choosing not to for a variety of reasons, like, you know, they don’t have transportation or they can’t or for whatever reason, they’re not able to take advantage of this kind of engagement. And you’re trying to solve that problem through technology?

Shawn Smith: [00:03:13] Well, we’re definitely trying to solve it through technology. But but, Lee, really, the the the issue let’s let’s talk pre-COVID. Certainly in rural communities, access to care, as you’re indicating, has been a challenge. Transportation issues, other social determinants of health issues were were a play and still are today in the in the pandemic and endemic era that COVID brought to us. But there was a transition more to telehealth as a way to kind of connect with patients. But that even though that technology has been there, many, many patients don’t really they’re not even aware that this there is a reimbursable program that insurance, Medicare and even private insurers would pay for them, spending time with someone to help them through their health and wellness strategies. That’s that’s literally 1.5% market penetration. So it’s literally a matter of the fact that the providers, the regular standard health care protection practitioners, your primary care doctor, your specialists are not staffed now to engage with connecting with the patients in between in-person encounters. So there’s such a need for virtual care and the patients just don’t know what’s out there. So that’s what we’re trying to do is to to make sure that we can connect with them and to extend the clinical practice into the home so they can receive the additional attention they need to manage chronic and acute conditions.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:32] So you’re trying to be the matchmaker between the medical community and the end user?

Shawn Smith: [00:04:38] Absolutely. That’s a great way of putting it.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:40] So now is part of the disconnect from the end user standpoint that they are just not aware that that this is possible or they don’t feel comfortable with it? Or is it once you kind of flip that switch in their head that it’s available, then they’re all gangbusters and they’re doing it all the time.

Shawn Smith: [00:04:58] Well well, fortunately, most of the the senior population, you know, every single baby boomer aged person will be Medicare eligible by the end of this decade. And that older elderly population tends to follow the instructions that they receive from their doctors. So if their doctors are aware of this program and they say you’ll benefit from from participating with one health in this delightful service, it becomes very sticky and they comply and they do receive good assistance. We’ve had great testimonies from diabetics with lower agency levels, with people suffering from obesity that are have experienced good weight loss for people that are hypertensive, that have. A lot lower percentages in terms of of their diastolic and systolic readings. We’re really making a difference when you provide and give them the attention they deserve. But to your point about the clinical practices, again, you’ve heard of the great resignation, right? During COVID health care organizations lost staffing. We’re some statistics say now that we’re about 200,000 nurses shy of where we need to be as an example. So it doesn’t matter if it’s a large health system all the way down to a small primary care practice in rural America. They just don’t have the staff to be able to engage the patients in the home where they’re spending most of their time and they’re having difficulty getting those patients back into regular encounters. So our kind of service, you call it a matchmaker that I haven’t heard that before, but it’s a really good one. It allows us to go to the clinical practice and say, you can offer this service to your patients. You don’t have to worry about staffing. We’ll provide a white glove, turnkey clinical service, delighting your patients that helps to engage them, improve their health and get them back in to see you on a regular basis, which is what it’s all about, that engagement that’s needed in health care, especially for the senior age population.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:45] Are you kind of doing this as a white label for them? So it appears that their practice is providing the service, or is it something that it’s your brand that they’re kind of using?

Shawn Smith: [00:06:56] We are happy to white label. So in some of our cases, the clinics are are asking us to answer the phone with with their name, Dr. Ramirez’s clinic. We’re great to talk to you, Susie. And in some cases, we’ve got larger organizations that say there’s benefit to to the partnership and the brand. And this is this is our partner one to help doing it. So it just depends on who our client is as to whether or not we white label it. But we certainly provide that as a service.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:21] Now, is this a service, your relationship, your financial relationship is with the medical practice?

Shawn Smith: [00:07:29] That’s correct. So again, if it’s a clinical practice, a hospital, a health system, we’re getting a lot of attention right now through our existing resellers and partners that have hospitals, especially in rural communities. And in Texas, for example, where we’re based, that relationship is there. So we are basically coming alongside and saying, you’ve got patients transitioning out of your facility from from a procedure or from a visit to the emergency room. We will help provide that transitional care and then we’ll provide care for chronic chronic conditions, chronic care management, or we’ll also offer remote patient monitoring, helping patients with the devices that measure their acute conditions, like a blood pressure cuff for someone suffering for hypertension or a glucometer for a diabetic. So those are the levels of services we provide. And again, we can follow the patient out and deliver the services on behalf of their hospital or clinic or clinical practice, and to do so in a way that delights them and gets some reengaged in a proper way back into that facility.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:30] This seems like a no brainer because of the emphasis, especially on the emphasis of outcomes. Nowadays, this is almost like an insurance policy to help them get the outcome that the patient is expecting.

Shawn Smith: [00:08:43] Oh, well, you’re absolutely correct. I’ll throw another stat at you. You know, 26% of hospital readmissions are due to medication errors. And a lot of that has to do with the the patient that’s walking out of the facility with a stack of instructions in their hands that they either don’t read or don’t understand. And there’s no platform to necessarily engage them. So to have a service where we can communicate with the patient in post transition from a facility, help them with their instructions, help them to be compliant with it. And then here’s where we are. We are a technology enabled service. We also have the ability of providing information in terms of a comprehensive care plan to tell them, These were your instructions, here’s what you need to do to get healthy and to stay healthy. And then we provide technology in the form of a digital companion, conversational AI or a chat bots that can engage with the patient in between encounters to say, for example, you were supposed to walk 10 minutes today. Did you? Patient could say, Well, no, I didn’t. Well, the system could then say, Can you walk today? Well, no, I’ve got leg cramps. Well, do you need information on leg cramps that we can provide? Do we need to connect you with with your with your doctor? All of these things that we can do to help make it more sticky in terms of patient engagement and compliance with protocols that were given by their doctors, helps them again to get healthy and to stay healthy. So I agree with you. It’s a no brainer, but it’s a unique combination of service and technology that engages that patient and gets them on the plan to health.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:10] Right. And I think that if it’s framed correctly at the beginning, then I think that the patient is going to feel less intimidated to ask a dumb question or I don’t want to bother the doctor or this, you know, I’m not going to go in for this little thing. Let me check, you know, wait a few days to see if it gets better by itself. If you can kind of lower that intimidation factor and make it easy and you want to have conversations. And interactions. Then they’re going to be more apt to use it and take advantage of it.

Shawn Smith: [00:10:42] Oh, I completely agree. So. So in our service. Most of the care is provided by a person we call a care navigator. Now, in the Medicare world and in private insurance for chronic and acute conditions, you don’t have to be a licensed clinician to deliver that service to a patient. You only have to be under the patient’s record and the care plan has to be under the review of a licensed practitioner. So in our case, we have medical students, we have church ladies and soccer moms who we have maybe have some expertise and knowledge in nutrition or exercise and what they don’t have in terms of knowledge, we train them through our care coordinator, Beth Sims, who used to run the health and wellness program for a for a multibillion dollar energy company. So we have the staff and the ability to come alongside and make this a less intimidating encounter for patients. So we literally build relationships with our seniors where they’re excited to communicate with us on a monthly basis. And often many of our patients desire more attention. So we also offer a subscription service where they can receive weekly or even daily attention and interactions with our care navigators. And that’s, again, by video or by voice. But again, we have that digital companion, that technology approach, even in between our video and voice encounters that really can create a relationship again and to help a patient, if they’re struggling with with their with their their diet, if they’re need assistance, with exercising in the right way, if they’re having difficulty sleeping, if they have some stress related issues, maybe social isolation and loneliness and anxiety issues post COVID, these are all the areas that we can help with. And and that’s that combination of a delightful in-person service that’s not intimidating and technology to help them stay on the plan that is of a real value to our to our patients.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:35] Now, does the service kind of is it possible to expand the service outside the patient into the family? I know when I was dealing with senior parents for a period of time, I was part of the team and I wasn’t, you know, in the same room with my parents at the time. So is there a way to expand kind of at least the communication element of this so I can help and I can be part of the team to help make sure that my parents are getting a good outcome?

Shawn Smith: [00:13:05] Well, Lee, I’m glad you brought that up because I’m in the same boat. I’m 57 years old. I have a part of that sandwich generation. The sandwich generation, 9% of adult Americans like me have a child still in school. I have a son in college, and I have a mom who’s 81 years old in assisted living. And boy wouldn’t what I wouldn’t give to be able to understand exactly what her care plan is and to participate in it. So that’s exactly what we do on the technology side of one to health is to roll up our encounter information into a personal health record and a comprehensive care plan that can then be shared with everyone in the care network of the patient and the care network we define as family members, caregivers that may or may not be family health care practitioners. You know, it’s why is it kind of a little bit of a dovetail here? Why is it that if I’m based in Austin, Texas, and I travel to Florida, I could go to an ATM and get a pretty accurate information on the side of the street of my financial information. But if I get hit by a bus in that street outside of my own community, that hospital is likely going to have no information on me or how to take care of me. Medication, contraindications. Past Encounter Information. We need to do a better job through technology of giving the patient a complete view of what’s happened to them in the past and then that care plan that they need on a go forward basis to to maintain their health. And that’s that’s what we’re doing with respect to one health on the technology side. And absolutely that’s shareable with family members, caregivers, other members of the care network.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:40] Now have we’re talking about how nice this would be to have and the people appreciate it. Are there stats to say that when this is in place and it’s implemented and people are taking advantage of it, they are truly getting much better outcomes that they are really kind of benefiting in. It lowers the cost for the medical institutions and it’s also lowers the cost for the patient and they get better outcomes. Like I would imagine that that happens as well.

Shawn Smith: [00:15:11] That is absolutely data that we are collecting today. We’ve we have it’s not just anecdotal, it’s real data. Again, I mentioned lowering A1 C levels for diabetics being able to to improve and lower blood pressure for hypertensive patients. We’re we are very, very involved in under patient consent to be able to collect information that that would produce trends and and to then disclose. Those trends over to the organizations that we’re partnering with for for their patient base. So, for example, we were recently endorsed by an organization of rural and community hospitals in Texas to do a pilot for 250 diabetic patients post transition from a hospital in rural Texas. And they want six months worth of data collected so they can then present that back in an educational seminar at their annual conference to all 160 hospital members. So it’s important for each of those facilities that are that are providing patients into our delightful service to be able to have the outcomes information that proves that there is a less recidivism back into the facility, that proves that we’re improving the health and wellness of their patients, that proves that they can be reengaged in a accurate and sustainable way back into the health system that is more cost effective and not a hair on fire 10,000 visit into the emergency room. So when you have that kind of information than the the payers of the world, the insurance companies are excited and get involved and will support the transition of patients into services like ours. So that’s really, really critical for us to collect that information.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:46] Right. And in those rural and remote areas where there is an access, this becomes a must have. This isn’t a nice to have anymore. This is kind of their lifeline to medical support and help. So this is not a non negotiable thing at some point, isn’t it?

Shawn Smith: [00:17:06] The need for virtual care in rural communities was already very, very big prior to COVID. So there are many, many people in again in our state of Texas that that might drive 45 miles, 50 miles, 60 miles to get to their doctor. And in the case of emergency situations, some of those smaller facilities weren’t really staffed or capable of doing providing the care that they needed and certainly weren’t getting the patients weren’t getting access to that care through through telehealth to help prevent them from having an emergent situation that would take them to the hospital. So it was really important already to have access through virtual first preventative care. It’s even more important now through COVID with the lack of attention that patients have received in both rural and urban communities. But but I’ll follow on with with one other thought in that area. One of our resellers is Hasa HASA is the largest health care information exchange in the state of Texas, 57 hospitals, hundreds of clinics associated clinical practices, mostly in rural communities. And for them, the idea of using technology and a service to engage the patient and to provide them with details that, again, prevent the need for them to be traveling to a very, very expensive visit into the facility is huge. It’s a game changer for rural communities. And and by the way, we love organizations like Casa Torch, which is the Texas Organization of Rural Community Hospitals. We love those organizations because it’s a fact that lower income seniors and seniors of color, especially in rural communities, have less access to care, less less access to actual information. And we are about providing that social impact in terms of our service. In fact, part of what we do is when someone subscribes to our service, we provide a free monthly wellness checkup for a person in an underserved community. So it’s part of our heart and our passion, especially in rural America, to provide that little service that is just difficult to get even prior to COVID and so incredibly important today.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:12] Now, do you have any advice for other founders who are dealing or relying on resellers as part of their growth? Is there some advice you can share about how to build those relationships, how to kind of get to know these folks when you don’t have something that’s been around forever and they’re, you know, it’s new to them.

Shawn Smith: [00:19:32] I’d say get to know your market. What would be my first bit of advice and it it sounds like it’s a no brainer and something that everyone thinks about. But but I’ve found and by the way, just this is my fourth startup. Once your health is my fourth, fourth startup, I’ve had the pleasure of being the CEO and the entrepreneur on three other organizations that were in the in the health care digital space, where, where we designed productize and monetize digital health solutions. And so this comes a bit of advice from experience. The organizations that spend the time on market research and spend the time, the money on getting to know their market, to figure out what it is that they have to sell, who’s going to buy it for how much and what value does it provide and who can they partner with in order to to get more traction is well worth the time in the money for for an entrepreneur. So if that’s not already baked into the budget, I would say that that’d be the first thing that that advice I always have, especially about connecting with other potential resellers. You can’t figure out who’s in the market that you need to partner with in. Until you better understand the market and then start looking for personnel that you can bring to to the party, if you will. So, for example, our chief sales officer had over 35 years of experience in digital health sales to hospitals and health systems. What a great place to start is to bring someone in with that kind of experience and those those connections and that network to be able to help you not only understand who your customer base is, but but how to immediately connect with people that can make a difference in bringing sales to your company.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:09] Good stuff. Well, how did you hear about Startup Showdown and Panoramic? How did they get on your radar?

Shawn Smith: [00:21:16] Well, again, since it’s my fourth startup and we were moving from our own founder and friends and family round into a seed round, I started looking at some of the institutional investors that are that are in the marketplace. And in Atlanta, Georgia, a good, good friend of mine that’s with a venture capital, I’d actually actually recommended panoramic ventures in the startup showdown. He said, Well, you know, the VC that I’m speaking with are, again, good friend of mine went to to Rice University, like I did in Houston. And they don’t focus they focus more on on fintech and cybersecurity. So health wasn’t their area, but they recommended panoramic and the startup showdown. And what a great opportunity to get connected with with a VC that that really can make a difference in the growth and the scale of your of your organization. And I think that’s what panoramic is doing with the startup showdown is they’re identifying a lot of companies with really unique technologies, with with great digital health applications, with technology enabled services like ours, and giving them the opportunity to take advantage of their own experience and their own network to help you scale and grow.

Shawn Smith: [00:22:25] And and that’s what we really love about panoramic since we’ve gotten to know them after winning the startup showdown is as one of their companies is that they’re true operators they really have the experience and the understanding and their goal is to help you to be to scale to a series, a round and beyond. And but they’re not just you’re not just folks providing money and they’re not just guys that are sitting on the board and saying, Give me your metrics. They’re really folks that want to be involved. They have the experience, they have the connections, they have the network, and they’re just fantastic partners. And that’d be another bit of advice for for a startup company is find the right partner financially that can understand your business and fill in the gaps in areas where you need help with. Make recommendations, advice, counsel on other partners, on on potential customers, on other people that might help to extend your funding. And I believe and know that that’s who we have in a partner at Panoramic Ventures.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:22] Yeah. It’s like you said earlier, relationships are important, so choose them wisely. Right? So if somebody wants to learn more about one true health, what is the coordinates? What’s website? Best way to connect with you or somebody on the team?

Shawn Smith: [00:23:37] Oh, thanks for asking. So the number one true health.com is our website and you’ll get a great view here of what we do to engage patients that are consumers, that people can actually register or schedule a call. Become part of our family. And as far as as my own email address, Shawn Smith, SJW and Smitty at one True Health and I’ll be more than happy to connect and answer information or if there’s somebody else in our organization like our chief sales officer or someone else that can be of service, we would be more than happy to to make that connection.

Lee Kantor: [00:24:16] Well, Sean, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Shawn Smith: [00:24:21] Thank you, Lee. It’s an honor to be here and all the best to you.

Lee Kantor: [00:24:23] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you next time on Startup Showdown.

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