Software runs my life

Category: Health

Leading the Product conference setup

Clinging tight to the HealthTech startup rollercoaster at ResApp Health

“Saving babies doesn’t scale, but YouTube advertising does. Surely it’s possible to put the scale of YouTube into the Health industry?”

Do you want to hear what it’s like to ride a real HealthTech rollercoaster as we tried to solve a real problem? At ResApp Health we were a respiratory HealthTech startup in a respiratory disease pandemic. During the blur that was the COVID pandemic, Leading the Product invited me to share my experience. It’s difficult to communicate the feeling of ultimate hope and near catatrosphy at the same time. I hope I capture how hard it is to execute on even the most obvious Health Industry problems.

Leading the Product - Monitor by Scott Savage
GutTracker Logo

GutTracker Android App for tracking your stools released

GutTracker LogoAsianGut was always about learning more about the gut by applying the key method Google has honed in me – collecting and pivoting as much data as quickly as possible. While Asian and American Gut are deep on the science side with 16S DNA testing and profiling, I had a personal experience that wasn’t so deep. A quick business trip through off my bowels and left me feeling frankly like crap for months. This more immediate problem sparked a thought that perhaps the data I should be starting to collect isn’t necessarily so sophisticated.

So after about a month’s worth of pretending to be a Product Manager again, and then another month remembering Java from several years ago, I’ve launched the GutTracker Android App. To begin with, it simply allows you to track your bowel movements on a daily basis. The interesting part will be when I start collecting data around happiness, probiotic consumption and perhaps even diet. Of course I would love it to also link to your American/Asian Gut results at some stage too. It is really exciting to be using Big Data to dive into the correlation and causation of what’s going into your gut. I sincerely hope that this app is useful both for chronic and wellness purposes and can build to produce some insights that make people feel better over time.

AsianGut Launched!

3 rice logoAsianGut officially launched today, with a great press release from the University of San Diego!

AsianGut actually started as my MBA major project, partnering up with a surgeon from KK Hospital in Singapore. We wanted to find a way to bring eastern and western approaches to gut health together, leveraging the best of both worlds.

We soon realised that American Gut was at the forefront of western efforts to use DNA sequencing of the gut microbiome to understand exactly what was going on inside us. I loved the citizen science nature of the project, which makes the anonymised data open access so any researcher around the world can work on it for the common good. Open access is a principle I hold very closely.

The launch of AsianGut represents me starting a non-profit distributor of American Gut kits into Singapore initially, and eventually Asia as a whole. There are many logistic, storage and other challenges to overcome, but I’m confident I can scale it up quickly. I’m doing it because I find it an exciting space, and one which can scale to have a really significant impact on humanity. Professionally there’s also a selfish benefit to me, I get the experience of becoming a non-profit director of a health-tech startup.

Now that the project has begun, the focus is on marketing and scaling the volume of samples so we can build the best profile of the multitude of Asian gut microbiomes. This will ensure future researchers can develop treatments and diet plans especially for us. I honestly have no idea what comes once we reach scale and establish strong perspectives on what good gut health even looks like. All I can hope is that we helped, and that we find a further direction that accelerates progress even more. So please sign up for a test today!!

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén