The OpenAI Startup Fund and Thrive Global announced the creation of a new company, Thrive AI Health, exclusively devoted to building an AI health coach. The company’s mission is to use AI to democratise access to expert-level health coaching to improve health outcomes. This will also address growing health inequities by bringing the power of behaviour change to the urgent challenge of chronic diseases.
The company will be funded by the OpenAI Startup Fund and Thrive Global as lead investors. The Alice L. Walton Foundation is a strategic investor in the new company, underscoring Thrive AI Health’s focus on health equity.
As Sam Altman and Arianna Huffington wrote in an op-ed in TIME, “So much of the conversation around AI has been about how much time it will save us and how productive it will make us. But AI could go well beyond efficiency and optimisation to something much more fundamental: improving both our health spans and our lifespans. Because health is also what happens between doctor visits. In the same way the New Deal built out physical infrastructure to transform the country, AI will serve as part of the critical infrastructure of a much more effective health care system that supports everyday people’s health in an ongoing way. These are some of the ideas behind Thrive AI Health.”
DeCarlos Love, a product leader who was most recently at Google, will be CEO of the new company. At Google, he led sensors, AI and ML algorithms as well as health and fitness experiences across all devices and platforms, including Fitbit by Google Fitness, Pixel Watch and Wear OS. Prior to Google, Love held product roles at Apple and Athos. His passion and experience are further cemented from spending time as a coach for different sports as well as developing a childhood obesity program in his hometown of Minneapolis.
Thrive AI Health will use the power of generative AI to hyper-personalise and scale behaviour change across the five key and interconnected daily behaviours that govern our health: sleep, food, fitness, stress management and connection. Given that behaviour accounts for a significant share of health outcomes than medical care or our genes, by adopting healthier habits in these five behaviours, people can make dramatic improvements in health outcomes.
The Thrive AI Health Coach will be an essential tool for both prevention and for optimising the treatment of disease through an AI personal context engine that understands the user and generates personalised AI-driven insights; proactive, multimodal, expert-level coaching as well as nudges and recommendations unique to each user across the five behaviours. They will all be powered by a unified health data platform with robust privacy and security guardrails to deliver a transformative health experience. The Thrive AI Health Coach will be trained on the latest peeHr-reviewed science, biometric, lab and other medical data, as well as users’ personal preferences and goals around the five key daily behaviours.
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