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.
A “thin wrapper” around GPT-3 that estimates the costs of a treatment around the world (may hallucinate / make up numbers).
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.
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:
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?
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
Nuevo Progesso, on the border of Mexico and Texas, has blocks lined with medical tourism clinics and pharmacias.
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.
Being a jerk.
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.
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! 🧠 🤯
Great updates. How do you have so many conversations with well connected people in different industries? I am impressed.