Forward

Hi Product Hunters, I’m the CEO and Founder of Forward. I was biking down to work a few years ago when I learned a close relative of mine had suffered a heart attack. What I saw while helping him recover would probably be obvious to most of you: that doctors lack the tools that we in the engineering world take for granted. There was a total lack of data-driven decision making and the experience as a consumer was really troubling. With a few friends of mine from Google and Uber, we decided to try to go after the problem from first principles. We realized very quickly that defragmenting the world of healthcare would be impossible and that the underlying incentives were really twisted, so we ended up rebuilding everything in a “full stack” way - we’re a software company, a hardware company, and we ourselves are the medical practice and employ physicians and nurses. Here’s some of what we built: - We built our own body scanner that rapidly gathers data about you and feeds it to your Forward doctor and to your phone, replacing the need for manually gathering vital signs by hand - We do blood testing on-site and give you results within 12 minutes. That data is also captured in a structured way and attached to your health record - Our doctors, who come from Stanford, Kaiser, Sutter, etc. work with you to build a plan incorporating your data and health goals. There’s an app running on a screen inside the room that shows you what’s happening and helps you collaborate with the doctor - Our app gives you 24x7 access to your doctor and a care team with doctors/nurses to answer questions and take care of follow-ups no matter where you are and what you’re up to - We ingest data from any of your health connected devices via Apple Health / Google Fit so that we can keep an eye on your health on an ongoing basis if you want us to - our system uses all the structured data we gather to flag issues to you and your Forward care team - We’re direct-to-consumer and don’t bill insurance for anything that we do. It’s $149/month billed annually and that includes everything, so there aren’t any random charges/bills in the mail and our customers are people, not their insurance companies :) Our first location is at 180 Sutter St. in SF’s financial district. We’re opening our doors today and would love to show you around if you want to swing by! Let me know what questions you have about the tech or the product! Adrian

Well it sure looks gorgeous...

@adrianaoun first, congrats on the launch! I had a couple of questions: 1) You compare Forward to a health membership and are charging monthly. In my head, I'm equating this to an Equinox gym membership. Do you anticipate your patients having multiple touchpoints during a month with Forward? 2) What would the typical first month/year look like for a Forward member? 3) Building medical devices is hard and proving they are accurate takes data and time. What's your strategy for building custom hardware at Forward (e.g., body scanner)? Are you getting regulatory approvals? Thanks for tackling this problem, and I'm hoping your model becomes successful!

Forward is a new kind of healthcare company, a health membership, that gives you access to world-class doctors and new technology. Read more about what they're up to here 💫 https://medium.com/goforward/hea...

Fascinating! What about stuff like Xrays/imaging? Typically on lower end health plans they aren't covered at all and seems like a major gap for most people on an ACA health plan.

What kinds of measurements do the body scanners and wearables make? Do you have metrics on how much time (and as proxy) that measurement automation saves?

Congrats @adrianaoun! Go cubs 😉