In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, both providers and patients are looking for better ways to manage their health. Demand is growing for at-home healthcare and digitized solutions, but innovators need to step in to fill these gaps. This shift is something that Reeve Benaron has seen firsthand.
Reeve Benaron is the founder, chairman, and co-CEO of Intrivo. He specializes in business strategy, partnerships, and mergers and acquisitions. As a prolific healthcare and advertising technology entrepreneur, Reeve Benaron believes that combining technology and healthcare can make the world a better place. Through Intrivo, Benaron hopes to use artificial intelligence, logistics, and manufacturing to bring healthcare home to more people.
Intrivo was the first company in the U.S. to provide at-home COVID tests within 15 minutes. Today, the company wants to do far more than that: in fact, Reeve Benaron believes Intrivo will one day revolutionize healthcare as we know it. As the world demands more from its healthcare systems, brands like Intrivo are bringing the world to the precipice of a healthcare revolution. In this guide, Reeve Benaron shares how holistic solutions — not piecemeal fixes — are the way forward for healthcare.
Treat on an Individual Level
Today, healthcare isn’t able to provide hyper-personalized solutions. That results in more sick people who don’t know what they have — increasing the odds that they will spread their illness to someone else. “Everybody has the sniffles, but having the sniffles doesn’t diagnose,” Reeve Benaron says. “Everybody kind of feels run down. They feel tired. They get this thing in the back of their throat. Your head feels a little foggy. Your eyes are watery, and you’re not quite sure what you have because of these different variants and everything that’s going around.”
Intrivo’s approach is to take individual data and offer personalized treatment suggestions. “It’s not really about the testing; it’s about the treatment. It’s about diagnosis to full treatment, and that’s how we’re going to get there,” Benaron explains. “Once the person knows what’s wrong with them, treat the person and then notify on a wider scale what it is that’s wrong to stop the spread from going any further.” The wheels are in motion for this innovation, but Reeve Benaron believes logistics will need to evolve first to keep up with individual, at-home care.
Predict and Prevent Outbreaks
“I think that the key to healthcare is to focus on not just step one, but to focus on the entire solution,” Benaron says. “I think COVID-19 is not going to be the last infectious disease that is faced by humanity. In fact, it’s almost certain.” In Benaron’s opinion, the best way to control the spread of future diseases is to predict outbreaks before they happen — and offer customized prevention tips before a disease reaches pandemic proportions.
For example, Intrivo is currently investing in data-driven digital diagnostics to predict outbreaks. “I like to compare it to the weather. The reason why that’s important is for things like natural disasters, especially, when it comes to hurricanes when it comes to tornadoes, when it comes to severe storms, the essence of it is to protect people,” Reeve Benaron explains. Intrivo hopes to use this data to communicate with the public about their risk levels, stopping the spread of disease by targeting the root of the problem. “Here is where we need to be careful. Here is where you have a potential outbreak. Here are the steps that need to be taken,” Benaron says.
Bring Healthcare to the Home
Intrivo is currently known for at-home COVID rapid tests, but Reeve Benaron believes the company can innovate healthcare as a whole by offering more at-home healthcare solutions. For Benaron, it’s important to balance at-home digital healthcare solutions with in-office treatments by a physician.
“It’s taking healthcare into our own hands in a proactive, fun nature, rather than a reactive, defensive nature because we practice reactive healthcare right now. By the time something’s wrong, guess what? It’s usually too late,” Benaron says. “Let’s switch from reactive healthcare, and let’s move into proactive healthcare.”
To that end, Benaron believes DNA testing can revolutionize at-home healthcare. By understanding an individual’s predisposition, healthcare providers can offer proactive digital treatment options. That might include personalized vitamins, lifestyle changes, or more frequent screenings.
The Healthcare Revolution Will Happen One Step at a Time, According to Reeve Benaron
Currently, the healthcare system is too fragmented to change all at once. “You can’t bring efficiencies to the entire thing because it’s fragmented. It’s everywhere. There are pieces of healthcare that are sporadic, and each one of those pieces is massive,” Reeve Benaron says.
Instead, he believes healthcare will transform one use case at a time. For example, Intrivo got its start with at-home COVID tests but plans to add more products over time. “We’re starting with tests, but ultimately our goal is to advance healthcare,” Benaron explains. “Our goal is to now take that 15-minute delivery system and then diagnose the person, figure out what they have, and then give them treatment just like they tested, bring them the treatment to their home within 15 minutes.”
Technology made it possible for providers to bring healthcare to patients in their homes, but it’s far from standard. We’re unlikely to see an overnight transformation but a gradual change from today’s reactive healthcare system towards a proactive, patient-focused model.
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