Asha AI

Asha’s holistic distance care solution helps elderly patients and their family members to monitor and manage patient health more effectively at home. Asha engages elderly patients daily, through Conversational AI, made specifically accessible to patients who may lack tech savvy and experience problems with their hearing, vision, mobility, or fine motor skills. “Asha”, our chatbot, acquires insights about the patient’s health through oral conversations. Data is also acquired through the IoT platform, which users can connect to various devices, and customize Asha to their needs. Actionable health recommendations are presented in real-time through Asha’s proprietary algorithm, which cross references various patient health data. Insights are shared with family and care team members. Through Asha we can improve outcomes for elderly patients with granular monitoring, increased medication compliance, and better connection between patient and care team. Gaps in elder home-care have been magnified under COVID-19, and Asha can address these gaps.

COVID-19 has placed a magnifying glass onto gaps within elder home-care. One such gap is the lack of access to easy communication with family and care team members.Currently most elders keep track of their own medical calendars, directories, and lack the tech savviness to use existing tech. Further, there is a lack of unification between hospitals, providers, patients, and care teams. We call this Fragmented Care Coordination (FCC).

Approximately 34 million Americans acted as caregivers for adults, over the age of 50, in the past 12 months. Among them, 82% cared for more than one adult. 

Another pain-point addressed by Asha’s solution, is the lack of access to daily data, which is valuable when assessing patient health. Currently, most providers can create care plans for elderly patients, but lack the insight to know whether those care plans are being executed properly at home.

Asha has three interfaces for different users. The Patient Interface leverages a fully audio-command enabled Conversational AI, easily accessible to elderly patients who may experience problems with their vision, memory, mobility, hearing, or fine motor skills. Patients engage with Asha, our Conversational chatbot, to gain a real-time understanding of their health. Asha also enables patients to use audio-command to call anyone from their editable care team directory, without needing to learn new technologies.

The Family Portal is a centralized hub for family members to monitor the health of loved ones in one concise place. It displays pertinent patient health information in an easily digestible visual format. Receive peace of mind, knowing that the health of your loved ones is being managed proactively.

Asha’s back-end IoT Platform enables patients to customize their use of Asha to their health. Integrate easily with general monitoring devices (such as the Apple Watch) for daily health monitoring, or connect to condition-specific devices (such as blood glucose monitors for diabetes patients) for insights that are customized to your health.

Asha is HIPAA compliant and patent pending. 

Asha serves elderly patients and their family members.

Elderly patients can use Asha to manage their health more effectively at home, by receiving reminders on medications, appointments, and recommendations. Asha keeps them on track of their at-home care plan and enables them to remain independent for longer.

Family members of elders can have peace of mind, while being updated on the health of the elderly patient unobtrusively. They can check in on the patient through audio and video calls, as well as tracking their health data through the Asha IoT Platform. Asha’s solution lets family members manage elder care without needing to be physically present.

Asha has a Beta List, which helps us learn how to address the pain points of our customers effectively before we go to market. Additionally, we are in the process of securing an enterprise pilot to give us added clarity on feature set prioritization.

Asha AI will enable families and care teams to be more prepared for mitigating the increased risks their elderly loved ones face during a health crisis or pandemic. COVID-19 has amplified elderly patient risk. Using Asha AI's voice interface, patients can track health changes to monitor for symptoms of COVID-19. If symptoms align, Asha AI could direct the patient to call their care team or physician to take the next steps. During COVID-19, Alpha Daughters are in most cases unable to see their elderly parents because they want to minimize spread risk. This makes remote elderly care even more important.

Existing solutions for remote elderly care are problematic because they expect users to be tech-savvy and are not accessible. Asha is designed with elderly patients in mind. The patient portal consists of a Conversational AI interface which allows users to engage through audio commands, making Asha more accessible for those who may have problems with vision, mobility, or fine motor skills. Accessibility and ease-of-use are Asha's top priorities for the patient experience. 

On the caregiver side, Asha outperforms competitors because of the access to daily patient health data and insights. The caretaker portal provides capabilities like communicating with the patient or other members of the care team, managing prescriptions and appointments, and receiving alerts and notifications on patient health. Data is collected daily from wearable devices and patient behaviors.  

The core technology behind Asha is our IoT platform. Asha easily integrates with a wide array of condition-specific and general health devices for greater data versatility. This enables patients and their loved ones to customize their use of Asha to their care plans. The IoT platform includes a Conversational AI Interface to allow users to take actions. Speech-to-text analysis will be used to convert voice commands to inputs. This solution will be HIPAA compliant and end-to-end consent protocols are build into Asha's solution to protect health data securely. 

By applying voice technology and internet of things connectivity to this problem space, we believe Asha can take elderly remote care to the next level.

Speech-to-text voice technology is already used in products like Amazon's Echo. The Echo devices include a conversational AI called "Alexa." Asha pairs this type of technology with internet of things connectivity and real-time data insights. Successful IoT solutions exist in several problem spaces, like home security or automated farming. However, there are very few (if any) products on the market today that combine these technologies and apply them in the healthcare space. 

Our theory of change includes the following components. 

Activities: connecting care teams, empowering elderly patients with reminders and information

Outputs: increased communication among care team and between care team and patient, increased engagement for patient with his/her health

Short term outcomes: more volume of data and more frequent data from patient's behaviors and wearables

Medium term outcomes: better medication compliance, better health behaviors (sleep, physical fitness, diet),

Long term outcomes: improved care for elderly patients, better health outcomes

Our solution currently does not serve anyone, as we are building for our launch. In one year, we will be serving 250 users (more than doubling from our beta group of 100 users). In five years, we will be serving 100K  users. 

Within the next year, we intend to release our beta to 100 users, refine the solution using feedback from beta users, and launch version one. For a build perspective, we plan to develop the IoT platform to integrate with condition specific wearable health devices as well as general health devices. From a partnership perspective, we plan to develop partnership with US self-insured Fortune 500 companies who can use our solution for their workforce. We also plan to develop partnerships with providers and payers to better incorporate providers into the care teams using Asha.

Within the next five years, we intend to launch in new markets around the world, further expand device integrations and technical capabilities, and develop more robust and longer-term partnerships with stakeholders.

Barriers include lack of funding to pursue further development work, and market dynamics including changes in healthcare consumer expectations as well as regulatory shifts.

We are building a team that includes top technical, business, and legal talent. Our team is building risk mitigation plans to proactively address potential issues. 

Asha has a team of approximate 15 people. This includes one full-time founder, a few part-time interns, and the remaining advisors who are engaged on a part-time basis. 

In the next few months, we will continue to turn more members of the team into full-time members.

The Asha team is comprised of a group of expert entrepreneurs, healthcare leaders, and technology executives.

Rashmi Joshi, CEO & Founder After starting her first business at the age of 16, Rashmi has gone on to become a  serial entrepreneur with a track record for building successful companies. She’s helped drive two ventures to successful exits and launched multimillion dollar products and services.

Dipankar Ganguly, COO - As a C-Suite Executive with 30+ years of health tech startup experience, Dipu has spearheaded the development of FDA-regulated point of care products for a variety of clinical applications. 

John Huffman, CTO - John has 30+ years of applied AI operational and clinical healthcare industry experience. He founded the Philips Healthcare AI PAAS and has successfully exited a number of healthcare ventures.

David Gans, CSO - With 25+ years of healthcare expertise, Dave is a national authority on medical practice operations for MGMA.

Dr. Tony Quang, CMO - Tony is a board certified  radiation oncologist, as well as an  attorney.

Michael Nikitin, CISO - Michael is the CTO & CISO at AIDA Healthcare Solutions.

Anjali Joshi, VP, Engineering - Anjali has 25+ years of technology expertise.

Blake Illstrup, General Counsel - Blake is the founder and leader of Orrick’s Technology Companies Group in the PNW.

Advisors: Dr. Haritha Vankireddy, Dr. David Cameron, Eric Yates, Dr. Blaine Warkentine, Dr. Yan Chow, Andrew Hajde, Jim Greiner.

Asha is looking to partner with non-profits such as the Alzheimer’s Association, American Diabetes Association, Veterans Association, and American Heart Association to develop educational campaigns for various conditions that affect the elderly.

Additionally, Asha has partnered with Infermedica to leverage their symptom checker as a part of Asha’s technology. 

Provider outreach and partnership will always be a priority for Asha, as well as partnerships with provider organizations. 

We have a subscription as a service pricing model for families who want to use Asha to manage elder care as consumers. The basic model starts at $30/month/per patient, with additional patients for an additional $10/month. Lifestyle management, Calendar Automation, and Communications Portal are available for an additional $5/month each.

We provide family members with peace of mind, knowing that the health of their loved ones is being managed effectively at home. Family members are kept informed of patient health.

Asha will also be sold to medical insurance providers and self-insured companies.

Asha is applying for several grants and will also leverage venture capital funds to launch and scale. 

We are applying to solve to collaborate with MIT on our launch and scale efforts. We are looking for technology expertise to guide us through our continued research and development efforts, and provide specific strategic advice on best practices in development.

Additionally, we are looking at MIT as a means to connect with funders who are passionate about our mission, and want to help us scale our efforts through strategic partnerships with providers, payers, and non-profits such as the following:

- American Diabetes Association

- American Heart Association

Since Asha is a primarily B2C solution, we are always looking for new ways to engage the community and our target market more effectively. Finding new channels, partnerships, and customer pipelines will be pivotal to the success of our mission. 

We are looking to partner with health-tech and digital health investors who have strong relationships with payers, providers, and healthcare non-profits that target elder care, as well as conditions that primarily affect the elderly. 

Asha has announced a Health Access Fund, which receives donated subscriptions from the community that are matched by Asha, and provided to those who need our solution but cannot afford to be a paying customer. 

Social determinants of health are more prevalent than ever- With many people losing jobs due to Coronavirus shut downs, access to health is lower than ever. Asha aims to bridge that gap by making our solution free to those who can’t afford it. 

Our solution has demonstrated proven impact, is highly feasible technologically, and scalable through partnership potential.

Asha leverages several different types of artificial intelligence and data streams to generate findings that help prevent decline of health in elders.

Our conversational chat bot, which is patient-facing, makes engaging as simple as having a conversation for elderly patients who lack tech savvy. 

Asha’s core algorithm leverages patient data collected from a variety of different condition-specific devices as well as general health monitoring devices to create health recommendations and predict irregularities.

Asha was founded by Rashmi Joshi, who has been a female leader in the field of startups and technology for a number of years. After starting her first business at the age of 16, Rashmi has gone on to become a serial entrepreneur with a track record for building successful companies. She’s helped drive two ventures to successful exits and launched multimillion dollar products and services.

Rashmi’s personal journey with healthcare and Asha’s mission is based largely on her experience in managing her grandmother’s health from overseas, after her grandmother was diagnosed with cancer.

‘Asha’ or ‘hope’ in Sanskrit, is also the name of her grandmother. As Rashmi’s grandmother battled cancer in India, the rest of her family battled the difficult question of how to manage her health without being physically present. Our connected world and an aging population require a holistic health management solution centered on keeping families connected to each other and to care. We at Asha are committed to solving this problem by using artificial intelligence to educate family members, connect providers, and proactively manage the health of elderly patients.

Asha will use the People’s Prize to develop and launch features that create inclusivity for those who can’t afford our current pricing structure!