The OpenAI Startup Fund and Thrive Global has officially announced the launch of a whole new company called Thrive AI Health, which comes decked up with one particular objective of building an AI health coach. Funded by the OpenAI Startup Fund and Thrive Global as lead investors, with Alice L. Walton Foundation coming in as a strategic investor, the stated company will leverage the power of generative AI to hyper-personalize and scale behavior change across five key and interconnected daily behaviors that govern our health i.e. sleep, food, fitness, stress management, and connection. Owing to the kind of ground these components cover to make up our overall health, the new technology is expected to play a significant part in both prevention and for optimizing the treatment of disease through an AI personal context engine that understands the user and generates personalized AI-driven insight. Here, it brings to the fore proactive, multimodal, expert-level coaching, as well as nudges and recommendations unique to each user across the five behaviors. Complimenting the same is how the Thrive AI Health Coach will be trained on latest peer-reviewed science, biometric, lab and other medical data, as well as users’ personal preferences and goals around these daily behaviors. Another detail worth a mention here is rooted in the fact that this whole value proposition will be powered by a unified health data platform with robust privacy and security guardrails to deliver a transformative yet health experience.
To explain the idea behind their latest brainchild, Sam Altman (founder and CEO of OpenAI) and Arianna Huffington (founder and CEO at Thrive Global) wrote in an op-ed in TIME:
“So much of the conversation around AI has been about how much time it will save us and how productive it will make us. But AI could go well beyond efficiency and optimization to something much more fundamental: improving both our health spans and our lifespans. Because health is also what happens between doctor visits. In the same way the New Deal built out physical infrastructure to transform the country, AI will serve as part of the critical infrastructure of a much more effective health care system.”
We referred to how Thrive AI Health Coach will bank upon generative AI to deliver on its promise, but what we still haven’t mentioned is the way it will harness resources from OpenAI and Thrive Global, including Thrive Global’s leading behavior change methodology, Microsteps and content library. Furthermore, the new health coach will also make a point to get the best out of latest developments in AI, including enhanced long-term memory capabilities and a custom-developed behavioral coaching model with domain-specific customization. As for what overarching goal the solution will try and achieve by doing so, it will look to actively pursue the aim of reducing trendlines on chronic diseases, which are skyrocketing around the world. You see, in US alone, around 90% of $4.1 trillion in healthcare spending — 17% of the total GDP — is currently being spent on the treatment of chronic and mental health conditions. Contextualizing the picture even further is a discovery that staggering 129 million Americans have at least one chronic condition. In fact, during 2023, eight chronic conditions, including cardiovascular diseases, depression and diabetes, hit their all-time highs in terms of cases.
Alongside its technological prowess, Thrive AI Health will also look to derive value from its partnerships with leading academic institutions and medical centers, including Stanford Medicine, the Alice L. Walton School of Medicine, and the Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute at West Virginia University.
“Through AI, we can make health and wellness opportunities more accessible for all,” said Alice Walton, founder of the Alice L. Walton Foundation, Heartland Whole Health Institute, and the Alice L. Walton School of Medicine. “Thrive AI Health offers the potential of increasing access to tools that can change behaviors and ultimately increase quality of life.”