Soft launching medicaltourism.ai + dissecting a cadaver + notes from convos

Experiments with AI, dissecting a cadaver, and convos with bio/health/med founders

I made some AIs at Medicaltourism.ai

• I made two experiments with AI.

  1. A “thin wrapper” around GPT-3 that estimates the costs of a treatment around the world (may hallucinate / make up numbers).

  2. A semantic search over the contents of the book Patients Beyond Borders, using Open AI, LangChain, and Pinecone (not mobile friendly).

• Try them out at medicaltourism.ai and let me know what you think!

I went to my first cadaver dissection

• You can dissect cadavers at Merritt College in Oakland.

• I dissected 3 cadavers and held a few brains. I got to poke and hold a liver, kidney, heart, etc.

• The first 30 minutes were jarring and a little overwhelming, not gonna lie. But then the people who’ve been there before just start going IN and then all the noobs hop in too.

• Some really cool people there:

  • a cancer researcher

  • a neural implant designer who works at Lawrence Livermore Labs

  • an E11 Bio engineer

  • an acupuncturist

  • a chiropractor

  • a window/glass installer who is taking night classes to become a nurse

  • and a bunch of other curious people!

• It didn’t smell bad. They don’t use formaldehyde, they actually use Downy detergent to preserve the cadavers.

• It’s only $60.

  

  No cadavers were harmed in the making of this flyer.

Notes on Convos

• Luis Mario Rodriguez, cofounder of Mend, BNPL startup for elective procedures in Mexico.

  • Even within Mexico, there are big differences between cities.

    • In Tijuana, everything is in USD. Prices are more expensive because people cross the border to work in the US and bring back home USD. +95% of patients are American, 0% Mexican.

    • Compare this to Cancún or Guadalajara, where everything in pesos.

  • What doctors value the most is bringing them patients.

  • Doctors hate monthly subscription models. Much prefer pay-as-you-go.

  • Doctors’ assistants have a big role. They would be the ones to select a CRM or other software tool.

  • Plastic surgery arguably has a higher LTV than other procedure categories like dental or vision. A patient might start with a nose job, like it, and then do a face lift, then a butt lift, etc…

• Ashwin Wadekar, also exploring medical tourism.

  • 2 problems to solve regarding medical tourism:

    1. Cost of Acquisition (CAC) - the life-time value (LTV) of these procedures is quite low if they only happen once. How do we make the unit economics work?

    2. Disintermediation - if you are just connecting patients and doctors, how to avoid being disintermediated, i.e. getting cut out.

  • Also exploring intentional living communities.

• Jibril, Co-founder of Lobby (YC S21)

  • Medical tourism is difficult because it’s not sticky if you only ever have one transaction/treatment.

  • How do you avoid becoming just another agency?

  • A key difference between a medical tourism marketplace and Airbnb is the difference between connecting existing supply and demand vs unlocking supply.

  • It’s pretty easy to recruit clinics in Turkey because their offices are generally quiet.

  • There’s a slightly adversarial relationship between travel agencies and medical tourism clinics.

  • There’s like one dude who handles the BNPL financing for MedicalDepartures / DentalDepartures and a lot of other clinics… something to look in to.

• John Tarantino from Blue Phoenix Stem Cells in Medellín, Colombia.

  • Expat American, ex-finance / Wall Street.

  • Partnered up with an MD in Colombia to create a medical services company helping people reach peak health. Starting with stem cells.

• Mitchell Ferman, energy journalist for Bloomberg

  • Wrote this article on medical tourism.

  • Nuevo Progesso, on the border of Mexico and Texas, has blocks lined with medical tourism clinics and pharmacias.

    

    Check out the Google Maps view of this street.

• Ryan Stellar, Co-founder of Standard Care and angel investor

  • Healthcare system is very entrenched. It’s more of a distribution problem than a tech problem.

  • United Healthcare is a monopoly for processing billing.

  • OPEC produces $600B of revenue. We waste 3x that on healthcare.

  • Epic is more of a database for billing than for medical records.

• Milan Thakor, founder of Jasper Health and Unwind Me (YC S14)

  • Building something new in the healthcare space.

• Timothy Sexton, Founder of DNA Romance

  • DNA Romance is an online dating site with a mission to matchmake people for love based on the compatibility of their DNA test results.

• Luc Ghislain, Founder of Canairy

  • Building an air quality startup.

• Elad Gil + Dylan Field fireside chat at Stripe

  • In the early days, only 1 or 2 out of 100 designers said they wanted multiplayer. Ultimately, Dylan and Evan still made it because they didn’t want conflict resolutions, and Dylan’s intuition from previously working at Flipboard.

  • The Thiel Fellowship is great because it gives young people the permission to do anything. Give yourself this permission.

  • There are two kinds of disagreeableness.

    1. Being a jerk.

    2. Making non-conformist decisions for yourself.

  • You can be 1, 2, or both 1 and 2.

Conclusion

Thanks for making it to the end!

As a treat, you get a gif of my debut performance in the React.js documentary.

I keep that (fanny) pack on me.

Lastly, I’m co-organizing a neurotech meetup with Sam Stowers at Founder.inc on Wednesday, March 1st. Come by if you’re around and neuro-curious about BCIs and brains! 🧠 🤯