Culina Health Co-Founder Vanessa Rissetto Believes Removing ‘Human Element Out Of Health Care Is Incorrect’
Culina Health Founder Vanessa Rissetto is behind a personalized, virtual nutrition-care startup that has raised millions of dollars to provide dietary guidance to patients.
Culina Health
Established and bootstrapped in 2020 alongside co-founder Tamar Samuels, Culina Health recently secured over $7.9 million in Series A funding, bringing its total funding to more than $20 million, per Essence. The health tech company offers holistic and evidence-based nutrition care from registered dietitians, its website notes.
Here’s how the platform works: Within 10 minutes, patients are matched with a registered dietitian to schedule their first 60-minute session. From there, they can discuss their health history, and follow-up 45-minute sessions help patients establish healthier habits and assess their progress. The platform has over 90 registered dietitians and has served over 10,000 patients across all 50 states.
Culina Health’s superpower includes its ability to track patient data and reportedly save its patients thousands of dollars.
“Anecdotally, they’re looking for $2,500 of cost savings when working with a dietitian. And we have proof because we’ve been tracking data since the beginning of time, $7,000 of cost savings per patient, which extrapolated out is like $10 billion in savings,” Rissetto said on the “Black Tech Green Money” podcast hosted by AFROTECH™ Brand Manager Will Lucas. “So that’s what the patient cares about very much… I think it is very powerful to see Culina Health keeps less acute patients out of physicians’ offices because we’re tracking the data every single week.”
She emphasized the need for patients to have more frequent check-ins with their primary care physicians, adding that this streamlines the process for ordering labs and follow-up consultations, ensures providers are properly compensated, and leads to better patient care.
Influence Of AI In Health Care
Rissetto also discussed the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) within the healthcare sector, weighing in on its pros, such as its ability to detect breast cancer years before it develops and allowing clinicians and dieticians to spend more time nurturing relationships with patients by taking over more routine tasks, like scribing.
At the end of this talking point, Rissetto urged caution, reminding everyone that while AI has great potential, it’s important to keep the human connection at the heart of health care.
“I think the thought that you’re just going to cut the human element out of health care is incorrect. Also, the data sets that we have at this moment are not reflective of [the] general population, which is a historic thing. So I think that’s a gap there as well. How are we training these models?” she said.
Full Episode
To watch the full episode of the “Black Tech Green Money” podcast, click here.
