Why Getting a Preventive Heart Scan Takes So Long

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0:00 The background story is my dad had passed away from a heart attack when I was very young. This problem has been something very personal to me since my childhood. I decided that I want to use the skills I have and the capabilities that I have to address this problem. Heart disease remains the number one cause of death. What we want to do is to help people understand their heart health early on and be able to act early. We are making the process extremely simple. It's as simple as just clicking a button.

So, you're removing friction from that whole process of people getting a look at what their heart health does look like. Welcome to the Zero Friction Podcast. This is Terry Coutsolioutsos and we have a great episode today with Arvind Srivastav and um it really is around a new technology platform and service that's designed to sort of provide preventative heart care and diagnostics um for those people that are you know want to know more about their heart and how it will function in the future. So Arvind, I'm going to give you a little um time to give us a a breakdown on your professional history and your background and then let's kind of go into what Veevo is doing for health care and more specifically heart care.

Definitely. Um my background is I graduated from Stanford and that was back in 2021 and after that I worked on AI for self-driving cars particularly I was working at Zuks which is part of Amazon and I was there for about 4 years and I let that left that job after to start working on heart health and especially preventing heart attacks. And what we want to do is to help people understand their heart health early on and be able to act early so that they can find any issues and prevent the problems and live a long life that is completely free of heart disease.

Well, that's great. And so your background, you went to Stanford as a graduate program um worked in the autonomous um vehicle industry. What was the main motivation behind getting and starting Veevo yourself? So what inspired you to sort of um wake up one day and say I want to do something different for heart care? The background story is my dad had passed away from a heart attack when I was very young and um after being in the states for about 6 years 2 years for my graduate degree and 4 years working in a job I felt that I have good cushion myself and I didn't want to be just working in corporate life and wanted to work on something that gives meaning to me and this problem has been something very personal to me since my childhood and I decided that I want to use the skills I have and the capabilities that I have to address this problem.

3:25 Okay. So, let's talk a little bit about Veevo Health then. I think that's the important part of what we really want to talk today is really it's designed to be a direct consumer kind of platform. um you're using current CT imaging technology that's available in the marketplace today from a heart scanning perspective. So what what kind of comes together that allows Veevo Health to look at you know your current status and what does that future status mean and so what are you really trying to do with the platform?

Yeah, I think it's good to take a step back and look at the problem itself. Okay, that um even today heart disease remains the number one cause of death. It's bigger than all cancers combined and it takes a life every 34 seconds. And there have been these studies after study that show that a lot of people especially when they reach to their 40s and 50s they start to develop silent plaque buildup or blockages in their heart arteries. And it can happen because of many factors. cholesterol, blood pressure, diabetes, um sometimes just family history and genetics that it's silently growing and it does not have any symptoms.

Everything looks perfect and fine. And some of the people can even be athletes who are ultra fit. But one day it strikes and they get a heart attack. And for most people the first symptom is a heart attack. And that's how late that they find it out. And again if we compare to cancer in cancer unfortunately we don't know when it's going to happen where it's going to happen and to some degree to whom it's going to happen but in heart disease a lot of it is known it's going to happen at the heart it's going to um so we know the location and it also develops slowly over time it's just that while it is happening it just does not have any symptoms but given the locality and Many times we know to whom it's going to affect because of their family history, because of high cholesterol, high blood pressure etc. So what matters is that we can act more preventively. We can act more proactively because it's almost completely preventable and what we are doing is trying to help people

Prevent that. Got it. So how do they go about and so we you've developed the platform. Is it ready for commercial release yet or are you still testing? Where where are these where does it stand in terms of ready for market? Yeah. Uh what we are offering is a direct to consumer heart scan called coronary CT andog. It's the most advanced scan that can give a very clear picture of the arteries. um and that includes the soft plaque and hard plaque so that a person has a very clear understanding of how their current heart health is and based on that they can personalize prevention. Where we are today is we are launching early access in California in the US and we are looking to expand to um next few states after.

6:48 Okay. Um, if somebody wanted to go and and access this today, how would they go about finding you or what does the process look like? Let's talk about the process first. So, what does, you know, we wake up one day and we decide that we want to we want to look into the future of our heart, right? Um, and our heart health. Where do we go from here? like is this you know like how do we how do we engage or like you know what what's the process look like?

We are making the process extremely simple. It's as simple as just clicking a button. So we have a website called vivohalth.com spelled as veo health.com and and they go to the website they can book for early access and once we remove them from that early access weight list we reach out to them uh we go over the steps with them and they don't need to go to any doctor because in the current way if a person wants to get this CT andogram heart scan first they have to go and find a cardiologist ologist which can take many many months. After that um they go and have a scan at a hospital and it can cost them $2 to $3,000 and then uh so this whole process can be very arduous.

What we are doing is making it extremely simple. Just come to our website sign up. We take care of the doctor side of things and that includes referrals. Uh we do scan at a lot cheaper price. We are targeting to have 50 to 70% lower costs um out of pocket than going to hospitals. And we also have a follow-up consultation after where they can go over their results with a doctor to understand where their current heart health is and what the next step that they should be taking.

Okay. So, so basically let's say that Veevo Health did not exist today and I wanted to, you know, have a picture taken of my heart. what like what would that look like for me? So, I would need to go see a general practitioner, right? Then get a referral to a cardiologist probably, right? That is going to then refer me to either a hospital or an imaging center to go have a CT done. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. So, I'm on three visits at this point in time probably, right?

Yeah. Three months or more. Yes. Right. So three visits, you know, depending on how you can coordinate that from a timing perspective, that might be six months, right? Yes. In today's health care society, right? And and and and uh and then what would the projected out-ofpocket expense be even if I had insurance? Do you think if we did all that like you know deductibles and patient visits and all that kind of stuff? Have you sort of looked at what that looks like? There are there are two pathways. Um, one of them is if a person starts to have some symptoms, for example, they are having a chest pain, what we recommend is to go to a doctor as soon as they can because one because it's something urgent.

9:59 And in those cases, the insurance also reimburses. So they don't have to pay anything out of pocket. But in all other cases, if a person wants to have a preventive scan, it will cost them $2 to $3,000 out of pocket beyond the time that we discussed, which is multiple months of wait time, right? Um and this this was something that I personally experienced and I was browsing Reddit and talking to people um asking questions, responding to people and I realized that it it was such a hard task to get a preventive scan and many times doctor just outright refuge it they'll say that in my opinion you don't need it and even though it can help they if they decide that the person should not have you wasted multiple months and you end up even not getting a scan. So we are making that process very simple so that people can own their health. They understand how their current health is. They are able to personalize their prevention and that's

A future that we are heading towards too that that we want to bring preventive health back to people where they can make decisions for themselves, they can make their choices and they are able to prevent issues by doing so. Got it. So we we are shortening the time frame. Um we're making it easy and the cost differential probably at the end of the day is probably very much similar in you know on how it's all done. So costs are equitable but the timing and the ease of use are definitely so you're removing friction from that whole process of people getting a look at what their heart health does look like. So um yeah so we are we are doing three things there. one we are removing the friction friction in terms of how much time it takes um instead of taking 3 months to 6 months it's going to be in a week. The the second part is we are lowering the cost by 50 to 70% compared to the cost that people pay out of

Pocket when they are going to hospitals. And the third thing perhaps which is of most importance uh of interest to people is the radiation concern that many times people don't get this scan and rightly so because they are worried about the amount of radiation exposure that they get and there are a lot of older machines um that are out there they will blast people through lot of radiation. What we are doing is also ensuring that we provide scans with lowest possible radiation that we can get which is two to three times lower on average.

12:39 Um so that it's also safe that if a person is having a preventive scan they are not worrying about the side effects that it might lead to. So we are solving these three problems and and that's how we are reducing the friction and making it easy um for people to decide to have the scan. Understood. So they they they go to the website. What does the process look like for them? So they click in and what does that experience? What does that journey kind of look and feel like once I start?

We will recommend people to visit the website because it's uh we have received lots of compliments on how beautiful the website is and after that um at the moment they just joined on the early access list and they sign up and um we are building some of these things out right now. So in California we are starting but in other states we are building out our partnership so that we can start to offer scan to people. Um so we want we don't want to take money in advance. We don't want people to pay us and then they are like hey I paid you but where is my scan? So that's why we are asking them that if you're interested uh visit our website join us and then as soon as we have it ready for you we'll reach out to you and offer you the best possible scan that we can.

Understood. So you're still building your your imaging partnerships and your and your clinical physician partnerships at this point in time. So you're still kind of putting it together. Um, do you have a time frame when you think you're going to be ready to roll this out? So, in California, we are going to be launching in a month. Wow. So, you're right there, huh? Yeah. Yeah. So, just just uh tying the last pieces together and in rest of the major states uh in the next 3 to four months. So, it's moving very fast. It's not a lot lot of weight time. We have already done lots of ground work. We already have lots of partnership conversations in the final stages. Um and we are really excited for the future and also we are very excited with the kind of interest that we are getting from people who are reaching out to us who are signing up. Um so we are beyond excited. That's excellent. So so I go in I put my name on a list and then and then let's

Say that you started. What's the concept of how this actually would work? The way it will actually work is um they will sign in in the portal. So after we um we have removed them from the weight list, they'll they'll have to fill a few questions so that we have a better understanding of their health and if they are a candidate for scan and if they are then our doctors will do the referrals to the nearest location that can provide the best possible scan to them. Um we help schedule their appointment so they just have to show up for the appointment. They don't have to go to any doctor any visits. We we make it all teley health at convenience for them. They just have to show for the show up for the appointment, get the scan done.

15:50 Um and after the scan, the result comes back. We again have a consultation done with the doctor and then they can uh access their results as well as their images. So can they can actually see their heart and not just a report in our our website itself. So it's complete seamless experience and um they just have to go for imaging and then that's all. So they get the imaging they get their imaging done. Um any lab work or anything associated with that? Is there is there anything else that is needed from a health perspective?

Generally not there there might be certain uh exceptions where it's required to have uh something called EGFR done which is a urine test um and that is within 30 days and other than that in most cases it just uh filling up questionnaires and and then based on that uh we can help decide for them. How do you go find patients? So like that's great like it's sounds like a beautiful service. How do you go find your your your patients to bring into you know into the health platform?

So far it's been a combination of um we had made a post on LinkedIn, we had made a post on Reddit and we got more than 100 people to sign up just from that. Okay. and and after that um we have been focused more on building out uh the imaging so that we can start to offer people but people have been signing up they sometimes find us through Google sometimes someone refers to them that hey check this out this seems like something very cool and um it might help you out so so that's how people have been finding us um over time we are looking to also partner with more uh doctors like cardiologists who care more about it because because uh there are lots of doctors who are uh focused on prevention and and they also create a lot of content on YouTube and Instagram and other social media channels. So we are looking to partner with some of them because they can spread out the word um so that we more

People can find us because that's one of the biggest friction points I would say in today's world of building a new company which is how do people get to know about you and and and that's a part um where I feel like um the the the doctors especially the ones who are more focused on prevention are the ones that we are going to work with. So Arvind, I have one question that I try to ask all my guests and um it's a little bit of a surprise question and but I would just say like today's Arvind, what advice would you give 18year-old Arvind? Like if you were to think back and you know where you're at today and you've become you know highly educated, you've gone to some great schools, you've worked for great companies, you've been in the AI business and the autonomous vehicle and now you're into, you know, AI and and digital health. Um what would you go back and give younger self Arvind as advice?

19:27 Be more be more confident and trust yourself more. I love that. So, listen to yourself, huh? Yeah. Um, for a long time, I struggled with uh deciding if what I'm doing, am I doing the right thing? I had so many doubts. I I still do and I guess that's part of the journey. But over time I have found that uh I can make decisions that are um I'm thinking long term I'm making the right decisions and it just gradually starting to trust yourself being confident u so that you can also live uh be happy because having less confidence it just leads to so much of u additional thinking going on in the head which is not needed. So, so that's what I would uh recommend to my younger self.

Well, that is um an excellent message to close on. And so, Arvind, I appreciate the time today. We wish Veevo Health nothing but the greatest success. What a great disruption and opportunity in the health care space. And I look forward to um working with you possibly and you know maybe figuring out how to get you know some greater exposure um with Veevo Health into the market and and you know getting people to click on that button to say yes I'm interested in seeing what my heart looks like. So have a great one and thank you so much for being here. It's a pleasure speaking with you Terry Coutsolioutsos.

Thank you Arg. Thank you.