Founded by the husband-and-wife team of Dr. Renee Dua and Nick Desai, Renee is a digital platform that helps aging Americans complete everyday healthcare tasks from taking medications to scheduling doctor appointments — all by consolidating everything in a single web-based app. Renee even helps clients save on their prescription medications and delivers them right to their door.
Nick, who is also Renee’s CEO, spent time with us describing how the company is radically simplifying health care.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Can you give us an overview of Renee?
Renee is a personal health assistant that helps aging and polychronic Americans, particularly people over the age of 50.
We help our customers complete their most routine health care tasks, such as booking all their doctor's appointments, booking all their preventive care, reminding them to get their vaccines. We work with people who have many different kinds of chronic conditions: obesity, diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, depression, anxiety, high cholesterol, COPD, arthritis, skin conditions, and many more.
We cover the cost of the most common 500 generic medications in our subscription program, so that the average person will save between $25 and $100 a month on medications, just by signing up for a program with us. And we deliver all their medications.
Is Renee an app you download onto your phone or other device?
We don’t require you to download anything — people hate downloading things! Instead, we have a web app; you go to renee.com and sign up. It’s that simple.
All the things that Renee does sound difficult to manage. Is that an algorithm at work?
There's a lot of artificial intelligence, which makes it sound fancy and difficult, but it's actually ridiculously easy to use.
A lot of times people think, “Oh no, I’m going to use another health app, so I have to enter all my doctors, and all my medications, and all my health history, and it's hard to enter and it's all so annoying.”
But we don't make you do that. Instead, we get on a Zoom call with you. And we say, “Tell me who your doctors are. Tell me what health issues you have. Tell me about your food. Are you you getting enough to eat? Are you able to drive to the doctor's office?” And when we ask about your medications, you literally just hold up the pill bottles, and we capture a picture of them.
So we create a lived experience. Once you’re using Renee, if you want to book a doctor’s appointment, we already know who your doctor is, and also that you prefer afternoon appointments, for example. We also know if you need a ride, so we automatically arrange an Uber to take you to the appointment.
If you need to go to urgent care, we get you to an urgent care that’s close to you because we know where you live. And it will be one that accepts your insurance, because we know your insurance. It’s all very contextual and personal to who you are and how you live your day-to-day life.
As you were building Renee, what challenges did you encounter that you weren’t expecting?
An ongoing challenge is convincing people to believe that health care really can be this simple. If you go to our website, you’ll see a headline that says, “$25/month total for all your meds,” plus your personal health assistant — and people don’t believe us! They think, “This is too good to be true. What’s the catch? No way can you do it this cheap.”
People think all these things because we’ve come to expect that health care in America is difficult, complicated, and convoluted. You have to wait on hold; it’s hard to make an appointment; the pharmacy lost my prescription. This is how we spend our lives, and it’s outrageous, right?
Frankly, that's why we offer the prescriptions subscription, because for the $25 price point, the value proposition is so appealing that people are willing to give us a shot. And we have a 30-day, 100% money-back guarantee. So if you try it, and you're not happy after 30 days, we will give you back every nickel you spent.
How can you offer prescription medications so inexpensively?
The secret is that prescription medications were never supposed to cost as much as they do. The average generic pill in the U.S. costs one penny per pill. So a 30-day supply costs 30 cents. The average person is on eight medications, so that’s $2.40, plus shipping to their house. We can do it. Everyone can do it. They just choose not to.
What inspired you to found Renee — and to name it after your co-founder and wife, Dr. Renee Dua?
Eight years ago, Renee and I started a company called Heal, and we decided to take a step back. At that time, Renee’s father got sick. Since she’s a doctor, he kept calling her up and asking, “Renee, what do I do about this medication? Renee, what do I do about this surgery?” And one day, Renee literally said, “I need to automate myself with software because everyone needs this help.” So that's what we did.
Is there anything else you'd like to mention about Renee?
We're proud to be a female- and immigrant-founded company. And our mission is health equity through innovation: There’s a 12-year life expectancy gap between rich and poor Americans, and we want to fix that problem. We will always put patients before profits.
#SpotlightOn