Ayble Health – Validation Institute Podcast Ep 11

Ayble Health has revolutionized care for gastrointestinal conditions, as affirmed by the Validation Institute. Their commitment to evidence-based solutions enhances healthcare accessibility and patient outcomes. The Validation Institute’s endorsement underscores Ayble Health’s impactful approach to chronic conditions like Crohn’s and IBS.

Key Takeaways from Ayble Health’s Impact

1. Evidence-Based Solutions: Ayble Health leverages clinical evidence to improve treatments for GI conditions. The Validation Institute’s certification highlights their commitment to data-driven healthcare.
2. Comprehensive Care Approach: The platform addresses both the physical and psychological aspects of GI conditions, offering a holistic approach to healthcare that transcends traditional treatment boundaries.
3. Technological Integration: Ayble Health incorporates advanced technologies like precision nutrition and psychological management programs, enhancing patient engagement and adherence to treatment plans.
4. Enhanced Patient Outcomes: Validation by the Validation Institute confirms that Ayble Health’s services significantly improve patient outcomes. Their programs reduce healthcare costs and improve quality of life for patients with chronic GI conditions.

 

Validation Institute:

Hello everyone. I’m happy to be joined by Sam Jacktell, founder and CEO of Ayble Health. Hello Sam and welcome.

Sam Jacktell:

Thank you so much for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here and excited for our conversation.

Validation Institute:

Well, I’m excited that you’ve decided to join us today because there are so many great things happening at Ayble. I’d like to start out by congratulating you on your outcomes validation for significantly helping people suffering from Crohn’s, ulcerative colitis, and irritable bowel syndrome. It is so incredible. So let’s dive right in. How does the Ayble Health platform help address issues impacting the GI community like healthcare availability, equity, and affordability across a large and geographically diverse patient population?

Sam Jacktell:

Yeah, big question. So perhaps the easiest way to illustrate it is actually my own patient journey. I’ve lived with ulcerative colitis for about 10 years.

I’ve seen all the best doctors, I’ve been able to afford all the best care, and despite all of that, I’ve actually fallen out of remission about five times in the last 10 years.

Unfortunately, that journey is really quite common in the IBD and IBS population, and it turns out that people like me are a lot more prevalent than you would expect, and we cost a lot of money.

Just to throw out a few statistics to put that into perspective: there are approximately two times as many GI patients as there are diabetics in the United States.

We generate around $140 billion of direct medical spend, which is more than mental health, trauma, and heart disease. People like myself are large burdens from a financial standpoint.

It turns out that we’re also not that productive, and we’re absent quite a bit from our workplaces. We are typically absent about three to four days a month, and then approximately six additional days per month we are not that present or productive.

The challenge is that not only are we driving a huge amount of claims cost, but we’re also driving a huge amount of claims volume, and the adjacencies are approximately a third of each month where we’re not being as productive.

So you look at that, it’s a staggering rate, and you go, “Why aren’t these patients feeling better?” Because the quality of life kind of sucks.

Patients would be willing to sacrifice approximately 15 years of their remaining life expectancy for a cure today that doesn’t exist.

I think the answer to this is that we’re actually only treating part of the patient with our current standard of care. So when you go into the clinic, you take the drugs; that is the standard of care.

It’s really important, unfortunately, those drugs alone are not substantially effective by themselves. We live 99% of our lives as patients outside of the clinic, and there are two things that are really important for us to do as GI patients that have therapeutic potential.

Those two things are dietary therapy and psychological management as well. These are and conditions, so you’ve got to take your drugs and do the diet and do the psychology, but the reality is that there’s zero support the second you walk out of the clinic for the things you have to do beyond the pill.

So Ayble is a tool I wish had existed when I was diagnosed. We are a comprehensive ecosystem of support beyond the pill. Concretely, we offer two clinically validated programs, one on precision nutrition, and we’ll be launching one on precision psychology very soon.

The validation that we’ve gotten is for our nutrition program, which is a 12 to 16-week program that guides people to identify and eliminate the foods that are generating their symptoms or exacerbating their symptoms, and we kind of hold their hand with a coach on the other side, a nutritionist.

We’ve also built nutrition tools for the “so what,” right? So, finding a trigger food is important, being able to implement that on a daily basis, changing the way you buy groceries, the way you cook, and ultimately, you know, adhere to those recommendations is really important, also considering cultural competency.

We’ve developed a database that covers around 95% of grocery items on shelves across the United States as well as two and a half million recipes that we can filter at the ingredient level.

That’s not just to filter and show compatible items based on our recommendations, for example, onions and garlic being poorly tolerated by a lot of GI patients, but also what if you’re hypertensive and need to eat low sodium, or you’re kosher, or you’re allergic to eggs? We have about 60 different variables we can filter for, and so what that means is that we are considering social determinants of health in our recommendations, so it’s culturally competent care.

The way that we have created the company is that we can plug in gaps in care for all patients regardless of where they get their care. I hope that adresses your question.

Validation Institute:

It does, and I have to say, you know, the best CEO and founders are people that have experienced this personally. I appreciate you sharing that experience with us because it’s so near and dear to you. Let’s talk a little bit about what was the thought process behind clinical validation of Ayble Health and commercializing the platform. How do you feel this sets the company apart from the digital health ecosystem?

Sam Jacktell:

Look, I think these days, it’s a good question. It’s a really important question. I actually really love your guys’s positioning in the market as well.

I think the challenge that we see in this marketplace is that there’s a proliferation of digital tools, and there are a lot of claims, but there is a mismatch between the clinical evidence that backs those claims up.

So I think one of the things that was really important to us is so we did not take a dollar from anyone until we had published peer-reviewed clinical research that showed that we improved outcomes for patients with IBD and IBS.

That was really important to us, but not everyone reads the clinical literature, and I think it’s really important to be able to translate that evidence on outcomes, on adherence, on engagement, and put it in a way that can be understood.

So that’s, you know, we really love that partnership with you guys to be able to do those and have the external validation where you guys have looked at our data independently as well, so you have that trust, and that we’re putting our money where our mouth is because I think when we think about this space, not only do we think that this is differentiating, and to be honest, should be table stakes.

As a patient and a prior clinical researcher, I think that’s table stakes, is prove what you’re trying to demonstrate. The other element is that when you put yourself in the shoes of a broker, a TPA, an insurer, an employer that has to make decisions for the benefit of their employees or members, how do you make that decision? Is it the fancy marketing, or at the end of the day, is it the ROI you’re generating and the outcomes that you’re improving for your patients? We think that that’s really important, and so all of our conversations start with, “Here’s the evidence. Let’s have a conversation around how we might be able to help your population.”

Validation Institute: That’s great. And how does the Ayble Health app extend care beyond the four walls of a clinic and create a fully integrated omni-channel experience for employers and insurers?

Sam Jacktell:

It’s something that we’re very actually proud of. We don’t disintermediate the physician, so we’re not just a cookie-cutter copy and paste tele-health platform, and what that allows us to do is actually integrate at every point inside the infrastructure and ecosystem that an employer or TPA broker insurer has created for their members.

For example, we integrate at the primary care site, we integrate with the gastroenterologist as an extra tool in the clinical toolbox, we are also available direct to the consumer, and so what we’re able to do is play really nicely in like an easy button manner to integrate into that ecosystem that already exists.

So, for example, if you’ve got an employer, that employer already has a teleprimary care group, right? We can integrate into that telecare primary care group where the physician or clinician can be some that care coordinator essentially just say, “Oh, Sam is a good candidate, here is Ayble, and by the way, it’s covered within that ecosystem.

” We can also find those individuals with our direct to consumer channel and connect that all the way to the top from Partners claims analysis.

When you connect all of those three things together, first of all, it’s very easy to implement, second of all, then you’re able to make decisions on data, right? On, are we able to find the right patients? Are we able to engage them long term, and are we able to deliver the ROI that we all together want to deliver? And that’s a unique value proposition that we have, which is that we don’t compete with any of the systems that exist. We just integrate very seamlessly.

Validation Institute:

And can I ask why did you think being validated was important?

Sam Jacktell:

Look, I think, for a couple of reasons, one is the credibility guarantee is really important. So for us, that allows us to put our money where our mouth is.

Don’t just take our word for it, don’t just read our papers, this is something that we stand by and that we have made the investment to have someone external to us, external to even the journals that we’ve been published in, with our 13 peer-reviewed publications, but having an external ecosystem of health economists look at our data and evaluate it.

I think the other element is it’s really sometimes valuable to have another impartial party in that room, in those conversations with employers, TPAs, etc., to say, “Look, here’s the research, it’s been published, it’s been validated by our peers in the clinical area, and it has also been validated by our peers in the health economics area.”

Coming from a background in pharma consulting as well, the health economics outcomes research is a huge linchpin of the whole value dossier.

So, having those two things together, I think, makes a whole package that I think is really important and that we would like to use to differentiate what we’re doing and prove that we can do what we think we can do for the patient population.