Why Human-Centric Care is Elevating Patient Experience with Abhishek Shah, co-CEO and president at TruDoc

[00:00:01] This podcast is produced by Outcomes Rocket, your healthcare exclusive digital marketing agency. Outcomes Rocket exists to help healthcare organizations like yours to maximize their impact and accelerate growth. Visit outcomesrocket.com or text us at 312-224-9945.

[00:00:29] Hey guys, welcome back to the Outcomes Rocket. So excited you tuned in for our episode today with Abhishek Shah. He is the co-CEO and president at TruDoc. I'm excited to have him here. Abhishek, welcome. Thank you. Pleasure to be here. Hey, absolutely. So look, let's get right to it. Super excited that you were able to join us. I know we played around with the times a little bit and finally were able to make a mark. Tell us about you.

[00:00:59] Tell us about your business, what you guys do and how is it different and why does it matter? Yeah, sure. So quick one on me. Been in healthcare for a couple of decades now. Really been fortunate to first work on the products and services side. Then flipped over. Went to the dark side. Became a VC. I was investing in early stage businesses.

[00:01:21] Got fascinated when I was in front of a couple of thousand founders and was really fortunate to see some of their journeys, the ones I'd invested in and stayed on the board of. And got enough FOMO that I wanted to solve problems on my own and not invest in other people solving problems. So found something that I got obsessed about, which is essentially could you use digital, use the mobile phone to be able to change patients' behavior and drive better clinical outcomes and chronic diseases.

[00:01:47] Was really fortunate to start a company on that about seven years ago. Built that business, scaled that business, raised a few million dollars in capital, got to about 250,000 lives that we were able to manage in Asia and the EU. And as we were looking to expand, we saw an opportunity to join forces with, which is now one of the largest, if not the largest digital health company here in the GCC, which is UAE and Saudi, which is TrueDoc.

[00:02:15] And last March, consummated the transaction and jumped on board and now combined the resources of everything that we had built in my first company, which is WellBe Therapeutics. And now here as a combined business in TrueDoc. So moved to Dubai, live in Dubai with my family, two kids, two boys, enjoying the good life and excited about building here in the Middle East. So that's a bit on me. That's awesome, man.

[00:02:43] Thanks for sharing your story and also the entrepreneurial story that you've gone through. You got tired of investing and you said, you know what? I could do this too. Like, I'm going to roll up my sleeves and be a founder. You've had success. Now you guys have merged. You guys are a bigger player. So I guess digging into it a little bit more, Abhishek, what end customer do you guys serve in the healthcare ecosystem? Yeah, so why don't I talk a little bit about TrueDoc, right?

[00:03:11] So really excited about what we do here as a business. We've been around for over a decade. Today, where we work with over 2 million lives in this region, UAE and Saudi being the dominant set of areas. We work with about 30, 40 health insurers, hospital systems, about 17,000 more even employers. And what we are effectively doing is we're offering a virtual first healthcare provider ecosystem for our partners, right?

[00:03:41] So we're offering everyday care, which allows our members to get access to consults directly from the comfort of their phone. Somebody picks up real time. We are the doctor. We also service a bunch of those prescriptions and labs that get prescribed and then we deliver that. So we're a full stack healthcare provider here. It's been really fun. We've been scaling and really enabling a great member experience and by NPS scores. That's our first sort of vertical.

[00:04:09] We do this and drive better member convenience and costs. Well, better member convenience and time that we're giving back to our members. On the patient side with better clinical outcomes, we're offering better cost savings for our insurance. So that's one piece. The second piece we do is with chronic, where with the business that we brought in, we've now been able to really scale and build a best-in-class chronic disease management vertical,

[00:04:35] which we're helping, again, members that mean it the most to be able to help them with the coaching, with the monitoring, with the behavior change, with the everyday help to be able to help them in managing their condition better. We're doing that at scale here in the region. So that's our second vertical. Also, we work with insurers, but at the end of the day, we're servicing the member. And the last is we do critical care, which is we keep people out of hospital, early discharge, get patients to recover from the comfort of their home.

[00:05:03] That's what we call hospital at home, critical care. So those are the three verticals we're running at scale here in the region and, yeah, having some fun while doing it. That's great. No, really awesome. And, hey, do you guys do any work over here in the U.S. at all? No, and no ambitions, too. So I think we're really focused. We see that there is a real need for health care in the region here. Yeah, exactly. And we can help. If you think about it, the Middle East is almost 400 million people. It's a lot of people.

[00:05:32] And just the markets in which we're operating, there's a huge opportunity. There's massive unmet need. We see an incredible opportunity to get health care to the members' hands when they need it and redesign the member experience around the patient. Yeah. And just build here. So be focused. I love it. Very intentional. Very intentional. And it's so important for, like, just everybody, the founders listening, what you do, but also what you don't do and where you don't go. Because that drives focus.

[00:06:02] I love that, Abhishek. And so talk to me a little bit more about the problem you solve. What's one thing most people don't know about it? I've been a health care entrepreneur now for some time, right? So as a digital health first entrepreneur, you look at the problem and get all excited about how much tech can solve the problem, right? And that's true to an extent. But the reality is if you want to be a provider, which we are, then there's an element of where tech stops and care starts.

[00:06:33] And care is still human. Care is still operational. Care is still deliver service. You can have great screen side manners. So as much as it is at the core a technology driven tech first, AI first, agentic AI, all the fun stuff, there is an element of care which is human centric. And therefore, we are the physician and we are the nurse and we take accountability for care. That's not going away anywhere. So it may not look obvious, but if you truly, we are a thesisist.

[00:07:01] If you truly want to build a great health care company, digital or offline, you cannot take the care and therefore you cannot take the human out of the equation. So a mix of AI and human and that's your list day according to us. That's awesome, man. I love that. Great, great highlight there on the focus and really the problem. It's a service and you guys are keeping that at heart. Look, we love to learn from successful people, Abhishek.

[00:07:27] What's your favorite business resource or business hack you'd recommend to our listeners and why? Interesting. I found figure out the one thing that makes everything else sort of less necessary, right? So I'd say a lot of time has gone into every day, get the big thing out of the way, eat the frog, right? So and if you do it enough times every single day, then the big stuff makes all the other and certainly stuff disappear.

[00:07:51] So I used to be the guy a few years back that got a high on a striking one item out of the checklist and then like having a mini celebration to now barely having a checklist. And instead focusing on the big thing or the big two or three things that need to be done and just get that done. And then just do that day in and day out. And that's a job of a founder, a leader beyond a point. You're not there to do everything. You empower, enable and get the hell out of your way. But the big stuff, what is it that you need to do?

[00:08:21] And now, and they normally are the ugly things. They normally are the things that you've been avoiding. They normally are not obvious, but they have massive compounding effects after. So do that every day. That's so great. I love that. And I think of it like the 80-20 principle, right? Like 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts. What's that 20% that, right? And focusing your time there. I love that. Yeah. That's great, Abhishek.

[00:08:47] Well, look, you guys are moving and shaking over there and really making a difference in care delivery and outcomes. What's the best place our listeners could get in touch with you and learn more about what you guys are up to? Follow me on LinkedIn. Follow our company on LinkedIn. We're here to stay. We're on a mission. We want to get to driving millions in outcomes. And we own outcomes. And we've got about 40, 50 publications. And we just think we're getting started. So follow us there and stay tuned.

[00:09:15] And if ever you're in the region, reach out. Love to grab a cup of coffee. And yeah, if you guys are founders, hustlers, entrepreneurs, and you're looking to join an entrepreneurial sort of organization, then give us a shout out. I love it, Abhishek. Man, thanks so much for joining us. And folks, make sure you check out the show notes so you have all the ways to get in touch with Abhishek and his company. So excited to host him here. And Abhishek, thanks for joining us. Thank you. Have a wonderful day. You too.

[00:09:54] This podcast is produced by Outcomes Rocket, your healthcare-exclusive digital marketing agency. Outcomes Rocket exists to help healthcare organizations like yours to maximize their impact and accelerate growth. Visit outcomesrocket.com or text us at 312-224-9945. Thank you.