The Pulse by Wharton Digital Health
00:23:47 · Arpan Parikh
[00:23:47] S1: Great question. So number one, let me just explain like why we have this super strong belief it has to be free, and then I'll... We can dig into, like, then where does the commercial angle come from? Because it it is a business. Right? So we have this very strong belief that it has to be free because the folks who need Kin the most are the people who cannot afford to pay for an app like this. Right? We know both from our own user research plus, like, now real user feedback and data that, like, Americans would pay for something like this. Right? Like, we have users who in interviews tell us, like, if you took this away from me, like, I would happily pay you for this every month. But the person who really needs Kin is like the 85 year old grandpa in rural Ohio who is on a fixed income and Social Security disability and has congestive heart failure and chronic kidney disease and cannot keep things straight. Right? Like, that person can't afford $5 a month to pay for an app, and that's who needs it the most. So that is the core root of this idea that Kin should be free. Okay. Great. Kin should be free. How do you make it free and sustainable in a way that is still ethical and protects the rights and the privacy of the patient? Right? Because there's a world in which there's a simple way to monetize this, which is you monetize the data. Right? I know in this world that we now live in, like, that's something we all think about every single day, right? It's like, what's happening to all of our data? And I'm sure both you and I and everyone listening to this podcast, like, you know, we use tools that are free or close to free, and, like, we know the way it's free is, like, they're selling the data on the back end. That is not Kin's model. It's, like, we do not sell any of our users' data. We don't we don't even train models on our users' data. Our users remain a 100% in control of who sees it. They can delete their data whenever they want, no questions asked, and it's wiped off the face of the earth. So then where is the commercial angle? Here, we we took some inspiration, not knowing it from GoodRx, right, Which is, as you think about the dataset that we have with each of our users, we know in real time, like, the next steps they need to take in their healthcare journeys, right?
00:26:08 · Arpan Parikh
Like, Kin here is the primary care doctor tell the grandpa in rural Ohio, like, Joe, you need to see a cardiologist, and I'm going to refer you to physical therapy. Right? And not only do we know that in real time because we hear the doctor say it, like, we also have the privilege of living on Joe's cell phone, which is such a privileged place to live as an app. Right? We have direct connection to our user. So now as Joe walks out of his primary care doctor's office, like, Kin is an incredible place to actually connect him to the things he needs, right? The cardiologist, the physical therapist, maybe the prescription discount program for the expensive branded med his doctor's about to start him on, maybe the vitamin or supplement that the doctor recommended that's available on Amazon. So now, as you think about what we call this action and orchestration layer, orchestration is way overused in tech circles and AI and healthcare circles in 2026, this is true orchestration. It's like we know what the user needs in real time, and we're now building the fulfillment partners to help our users get those things in a way that it's magical to them. So like, it's a truly delightful moment. Like, just imagine you walk out of a doctor's office and the doctor told you to do five things, and now you have an app on your phone that's already gone and gotten you those five things before, like, you reach your car or the subway. That's, like, an incredible experience as a patient in America. And those are inherently extremely commercial streams that we just get to dip into and participate in. So we like that as our model way more than relying on, you know, charging the user a monthly or annual subscription fee for the app itself.
00:27:54 · Chase, Arpan Parikh
[00:27:54] S0: Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Is Kin able to actually go in and and, you know, initiate those actions, or is it more you're prompting the patient to then schedule the follow-up and order the medication, etcetera? [00:28:07] S1: Great question. We're taking a crawl, walk, run approach here. Right? So this quarter, Q4 of twenty twenty six, we will likely launch our first couple or handful of crawl versions of this, which is Chase, we just heard your doctor say you need X, Y, Z. Here's where you can get X. Here's where you can get y. Here's where you can get z. And we'll sort of, like, seamlessly hand you off to, like, the partner for fulfillment of x, of y, and of z. Right? The walk version of this, which we'll build, like, as a fast follow in q one, will be slightly more active orchestration. Right? And then the run version of this is we just do it seamlessly for you in the background and tee it up. All all of this with your permission, of course. Right? We're not gonna share our users' data with an external party without their permission to, for example, book a specialty appointment, but we'll ask for permission to do that. And once you as a user give us that, then, like, we can easily go and make that happen. So crawl q four twenty twenty six, walk q one twenty twenty seven, and then run q one q two twenty twenty seven.
00:28:07 · Arpan Parikh, Chase
[00:28:07] S1: Great question. We're taking a crawl, walk, run approach here. Right? So this quarter, Q4 of twenty twenty six, we will likely launch our first couple or handful of crawl versions of this, which is Chase, we just heard your doctor say you need X, Y, Z. Here's where you can get X. Here's where you can get y. Here's where you can get z. And we'll sort of, like, seamlessly hand you off to, like, the partner for fulfillment of x, of y, and of z. Right? The walk version of this, which we'll build, like, as a fast follow in q one, will be slightly more active orchestration. Right? And then the run version of this is we just do it seamlessly for you in the background and tee it up. All all of this with your permission, of course. Right? We're not gonna share our users' data with an external party without their permission to, for example, book a specialty appointment, but we'll ask for permission to do that. And once you as a user give us that, then, like, we can easily go and make that happen. So crawl q four twenty twenty six, walk q one twenty twenty seven, and then run q one q two twenty twenty seven. [00:29:10] S0: Got it. Okay. That's super helpful. And then other question is, are you... In terms of your partnership strategy, are you focusing first on a particular group like providers or pharmacies? You know, what... What's your sort of initial wedge there?
00:29:27 · Arpan Parikh
[00:29:27] S1: Yeah. So from a go to market perspective, it's a really interesting business. So so far, most of our users have actually been acquired via paid channels. And it's... What's really interesting... There's two... Actually, there's many interesting things, but two really interesting things are our power users at Kin today are Americans, like, age 50 to 90 in the middle of the country, which I really like. Right? And this is kind of going back to, like, why I chose to be a psychiatrist and, like, serving the underserved. It's like, you know, the coastal elites and people like you and I, like, we we we need kin, but, we're not gonna, you know, die if we don't have it. There are people in the middle of the country who will die if they don't have Kin. Right? Because we know a hundred thousand Americans die every year because they forgot or didn't understand what the doctor told them. And typically speaking, that's not people like you or I. Right? So I think it's very cool and compelling that we've been able to build a cutting edge AI software product that is actually so simple and delightful to use that, like, again, to go back to the example, the 90 year old grandpa in Iowa City is, like, using it 10 times a week. So I love that. And we've acquired most of those users using paid channels. What we're scaling up now, though, is a really interesting muscle of B2B2C distribution, which is we actually now get distribution inside the traditional healthcare ecosystem, which is a very defensible moat for us as a business, right? So today there are physician practices and ACOs and MSOs and resparent groups, and soon some large health systems from California to Florida and everywhere in between that actually recommend Kin to their patients at the point of care. And again, there's many parallels here between Kin and GoodRx. The way it works is we activate the practice. The practice is like, this is a no brainer, like why wouldn't we tell our patients about this? And then we send them a beautiful kit in the mail and they put collateral for Kin in their waiting rooms and in their exam rooms. And the front desk hands out tear sheets to every patient who walks in saying, This is something we recommend you download and use when you walk back to see the doctor, because they'll help you remember what the doctor told you.
00:31:42 · Arpan Parikh, Chase
And I think that's beautiful, number one, because it's defensible, but number two, because we're not only serving our primary users who are the patients, like we are also solving a major pain point that every doctor feels. And as one myself, it's really cool to be able to kind of solve pain points for like two very important stakeholders in the healthcare system. [00:32:03] S0: Mhmm. Yeah. I I can also see a value prop for payers given this increases patients follow-up and medication adherence, etcetera, which is going to improve outcomes and ultimately lower costs for them. So I'm sure you guys are thinking about all those things. [00:32:19] S1: A 100%. We're in active conversations right now with a number of health plans from across all lines of business, right? Commercial, Medicare Advantage, Medicaid, and it's exactly the value prop you described. The data suggests, and some of our modeling suggests, a tool like Kin that can reduce the amount of information a member of a health plan forgets, right, when they leave the office can drive somewhere between one and two and a half percent total cost of care savings to the bottom line. And one to 2% of the bottom line for a health plan is massive margin uplift. Right? [00:32:56] S0: Wow. Yeah. That's great. Yeah. Switching gears a little bit. So as you know, The Pulse is a a digital health care podcast. So I wanna learn a little bit more about Kin's tech stack and, you know, how everything runs on top of your your core platform.