Treating coronavirus should focus 'around localization and personalization’: Buoy Health CEO

Buoy Health, an online symptom checker and diagnostics platform driven by artificial intelligence, has recently been named by the state of Virginia as its official coronavirus tracker. Buoy Health CEO Andrew Le joins The Final Round to break down its AI driven diagnostic system and what his company has been doing amid the coronavirus outbreak.

Video Transcript

AKIKO FUJITA: OK, thanks so much for that, Jared. Let's turn our attention back to what's happening with the coronavirus. As we said or as Jen mentioned, certainly, a lot of states beginning that reopening process. And-- and a big part of that, in terms of states and cities feeling comfortable about it, has to do with the amount of testing that's available.

Our next guest has developed symptom trackers to determine who exactly should get the test. And, today, they are announcing a big partnership with the state of Virginia. I want to bring in our guest, CEO of Buoy Health, Andrew Le. Andrew, it's great to have you on today.

Let's talk about what exactly this symptom tracker does because, you know, we've talked at length about the lack of tests that are available, you know, even as a lot of these states begin to reopen. What exactly would this symptom tracker do in terms of determining who should get tested?

ANDREW LE: Yeah, great question. So what-- what Buoy does is we built this even before COVID. We built an AI health assistant that helps people figure out what to do when they're sick to, basically, get them from I'm sick-- I have no idea what to do-- to here's my in-network provider.

We then responded to coronavirus quite early in January, took in the CDC guidelines, layered them on top of our AI. And the intent here is to take those guidelines and help an individual understand am I actually fit for a test, given my clinical situation, what state I'm in, and then with-- in partnership with a state, such as the Commonwealth of Virginia, handing them off into the right telemedicine that's specific for their insurer and then the right testing sites that are located near them, based on distance.

So it's really helping an individual navigate a really uncertain time as to do I need to go get tested. If I do need to get tested, do I need a referral? How do I get that referral? That process is really difficult for, you know, the average person to think through, especially during a time where there's a lot of fear and a lot of uncertainty.

ANJALEE KHEMLANI: Andrew, Anjalee here, I know that I've seen a number of states roll out different platforms, as well as some of the larger tech companies. And even the CDC themselves do you have similar platforms. So how does this, you know, play into that broader landscape? Are you competing with them? Or is this just another one? I mean, I know you also have a relationship with Massachusetts.

ANDREW LE: Yeah, I wouldn't call it competitive. We have been in the navigation space for eight years now in building our platform. And, while there are a lot of companies out there that are doing screening, as the pandemic continues to lag on, we see that screening isn't enough. It's really around localization and personalization, which really goes back to kind of our core competency, which is navigation.

And so, with our rollout with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and now the Commonwealth of Virginia, it's really becoming very localized in terms of understanding exactly what in-network solutions are fit for you exactly, what test sites are accepting your insurance, and getting you into that right location at the right time versus, you know, kind of pure screening of, OK, you know, if I have x, y, or z symptom, this is just what I should do. It's now really becoming an issue of load balancing and navigation, which is what we've been building for eight years.

And the ties that we have deeply into health insurance, into the health system world, into the PBMs, that's a place where we feel a lot of comfort. Our investors are all strategic investors, some the largest insurance companies in the US, you know, versus a tech-- you know, one of the big tech players who are coming in, and that's not really their area of comfort. So we really see there's a lot of value here in the navigation space when you're having been a navigation platform before.

ANJALEE KHEMLANI: And what do you do with this information? Are you sharing it with the state, with the state health department? How does it help in terms of, you know, larger surveillance for the country, in terms of knowing what's going on in Virginia and Massachusetts?

ANDREW LE: So we're providing de-identified data at a county level to the state of Massachusetts. And we will with the state of Virginia. And in that county-level data, helping the Department of Public Health basically see the number of people that are symptomatic, what buckets of risk they're in, whether they need to go get testing, or they need to be self-isolated, or if they need to urgently go in to see a doctor. And the opportunity with that data is to understand where there are pockets of a lot of patients who seem to be symptomatic and requiring care.

So it's really ground-level data in terms of, if you think about the alternative, you would have to wait for people to come in. You would have to wait for people to go get tested before you were able to see that information. And so we're really seeing kind of the pandemic at its earliest stage, which is when people initially develop that symptom.

MELODY HAHM: And, Andrew, you know, you existed before COVID. You will exist after COVID. Just thinking about, you know, I'm here in Los Angeles. And there's-- there's a consortium of six different medical centers, including UCLA Health, Kaiser Permanente, that have this new campaign, which is, essentially, take care of your health and all of the ongoing health issues that you've had, regardless of the coronavirus pandemic. How do you see this sort of activity on your platform right now? Do you feel like all of those kinds of queries have been sidelined or that's happening concurrently?

ANDREW LE: Melody, Melody, that's such a great question. Actually, one of the key points about us having existed well before COVID and being in this space before COVID is that our AI was built to help anyone, someone with any health care condition. And so, with the hundreds of thousands of interviews that we've done in the state of Massachusetts, for instance, I believe the number is like, 15% of the time, someone actually has a non-COVID issue in which case, as opposed to a screening tool that was built over the course of a few months in order to respond to the pandemic, our kind of traditional product actually takes over and helps people figure out what is actually going on that is unrelated, potentially, to coronavirus.

So I know there's actually quite a bit of concern over the fall in the number of people that have been coming in for appendicitis or heart attacks. Cancer diagnoses are down. It's not like any of this is slowing down because of the pandemic. People are still getting sick. They still need help. And so another part of why it's important to-- why, you know, what we're doing is important that we've kind of been around before that is that we can handle, you know, those situations too.

AKIKO FUJITA: OK, Andrew Le, the CEO of Buoy Health, great to have you on today. Thanks so much for joining us.

ANDREW LE: Thanks for having me.