Written by : Jayati Dubey
July 9, 2024
Thrive AI Health will use GenAI to offer hyper-personalized behavior change coaching for sleep, food, fitness, stress management, and connection.
The OpenAI Startup Fund and Thrive Global have announced a new venture, Thrive AI Health to develop an AI-based health coach.
This venture aims to democratize access to expert-level health coaching, improve health outcomes, and address health inequities through behavior change. The initiative focuses on managing the challenges of chronic diseases.
Thrive AI Health will receive funding from the OpenAI Startup Fund and Thrive Global, which will serve as lead investors. The Alice L Walton Foundation is also a strategic investor.
DeCarlos Love, a seasoned product leader with experience at Google, Apple, and Athos, will serve as the CEO of Thrive AI Health. At Google, Love led teams focused on AI, ML algorithms, and health and fitness experiences across various devices and platforms.
Sam Altman of OpenAI and Arianna Huffington of Thrive Global articulated in an op-ed for TIME that AI's potential extends beyond productivity and efficiency to fundamentally improving health spans and lifespans.
They emphasize that AI can provide continuous health support between doctor visits. Thrive AI Health aims to integrate AI as a critical component of healthcare infrastructure.
Thrive AI Health will use generative AI to provide hyper-personalized behavior change coaching across five key daily behaviors such as sleep, food, fitness, stress management, and connection.
These behaviors significantly influence health outcomes more than medical care or genetics. The AI health coach aims to substantially improve health outcomes by promoting healthier habits in these areas.
The AI health coach will feature an AI personal context engine that understands users and generates personalized insights. It will offer multimodal, expert-level coaching, along with unique nudges and recommendations tailored to each user.
A unified health data platform with robust privacy and security measures will support these functionalities, ensuring a transformative health experience.
Thrive AI Health will leverage the latest AI advancements, including enhanced long-term memory capabilities and a custom-developed behavioral coaching model with domain-specific customization.
This integration aims to empower individuals to take actionable steps across the five daily behaviors, ultimately improving health outcomes.
Additionally, Thrive AI Health will draw upon resources from OpenAI and Thrive Global, including Thrive Global's behavior change methodology, microsteps, and extensive content library.
Chronic diseases such as diabetes and cardiovascular diseases are directly linked to daily behaviors and disproportionately affect underserved communities.
Thrive AI Health aims to reduce the prevalence of these conditions by effectively using AI to reach and support these communities.
In the United States alone, approximately 90% of the $4.1 trillion spent on healthcare—17% of GDP—is directed towards treating chronic and mental health conditions.
With 129 million Americans suffering from at least one chronic condition and eight chronic conditions reaching all-time highs in 2023, the current healthcare approach is unsustainable.
DeCarlos Love emphasized the unprecedented opportunity presented by recent AI advancements to make behavior change more robust and sustainable.
He noted AI's remarkable ability to assimilate large datasets, extract actionable insights, recognize patterns, and deliver personalized recommendations.
However, despite these technological advances, the current landscape of large language models (LLMs) still falls short of delivering a comprehensive and effective personalized behavior change and coaching experience.
"Thrive AI Health Coach is the product to solve the limitations of current AI and LLM-based solutions by providing personalized, proactive, and data-driven coaching across the five daily behaviors. This is how it will improve health outcomes, reduce healthcare costs, and significantly impact chronic diseases worldwide," added Love.