Preventative
According to the Ripe Health Assessment Study, nearly half of senior executives have one or more chronic health conditions, while only 35% of the general population lives with a chronic illness. Between their workload and older age, senior leaders tend to have the recipe for chronic illness — and yet, like most Americans, they put off visiting their doctor until something seems vitally wrong.
Johannes Bhakdi, founder and CEO of preventative care platform Quantgene, is on a mission to help workers live longer, healthier lives, starting with senior executive leadership. He encourages employers to start prioritizing preventative care, and recently introduced a new digital tool, Serenity Complete, to empower workforces to easily keep up with preventative care.
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"Serenity Complete is a preventative healthcare system for executives that helps them determine their risk of chronic illnesses like cancer, diabetes and heart disease," says Bhakdi, pointing to an annual subscription offering that employers can provide to their workers, which includes two check-ups a year, in addition to other preventative offerings. "Early detection is key to increasing survival rates."
Bhakdi knows this firsthand. After fighting for three and a half years, his mom passed away from stage four colon cancer. Despite being a doctor, even Bhakdi's mom kept putting off her colonoscopy.
"She was in a tough spot in her life, and no one was fully aware outside herself and her doctor that she needed to do the [test]. Her doctor didn't really push her," he says. "She was a textbook example of unnecessary death. We don't take prevention seriously enough."
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Bhakdi founded Quantgene in 2015 a few months after his mom's passing. He is intent on building a solution that is not only personalized to each patient's genetic makeup but is convenient to use. Along with Quantgene's preventative care providers, Serenity users have access to liquid biopsy screenings, a non-invasive way for doctors to find out more about a tumor through a blood sample. Additionally, Serenity features whole exome sequencing and pharmacogenomic sequencing, which tells providers whether someone has possible disease-causing mutations or if they will have a bad reaction to a drug.
To create ease of use, Bhakdi's made sure to remove some of the friction points that come with visiting the doctor. Depending on one's work schedule, a nurse can be sent to the office or home to conduct tests and retrieve samples. Bhakdi believes that regular check-ups like this can make the difference between life and death. For example, a patient who catches breast cancer in stage one has a 90% chance of living for five years beyond their diagnosis — at stage four, those chances drop down to 28%.
Ultimately, the U.S. healthcare system does not prioritize preventative healthcare, but instead waits for someone to be sick to the point of treatment, says Bhakdi. He notes that preventative usually comes with a short-term, upfront expense that saves patients money down the line; but insurance companies have an eye on their profit margins.
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"Insurance companies have a certain preconceived notion of what they believe should be paid for, and then put a lot of constraints on what can be done," he says. "If you stick strictly to what BlueShield or UnitedHealthcare tells you, then you have no leeway."
Still, Bhakdi believes that employers have an obligation to their employees, especially those who have been taking on more responsibilities and leading their organizations in the last few years. He advises employers to protect the health of their employees rather than wait for workers to begin missing work or showing drops in productivity due to chronic illness.
This means embracing the future of healthcare, which for Bhakdi, rests in preventative care and technology.
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"The future of preventative care is mostly a medical intelligence problem," he says. "You need a cloud system like Serenity that understands each patient, creates a custom profile for the patient with a custom preventative care strategy that is optimized for outcomes and costs."
Whether employers jump on
"You don't want a doctor or healthcare system that waits until you're incredibly sick with cancer or diabetes," says Bhakdi. "We want to know the risks and make sure there is a good outcome."
