"I’ve always believed that if you look at health from a health perspective, you’re missing half the story," said Heather Holmes.
Health and wealth are often intertwined, she explained. Medical expenses account for the majority of bankruptcies. A financial situation can impact care and comfort, while a health crisis can decimate a family financially.
With her new startup Genivity, Holmes hopes that neither will be compromised for the other.
Genivity, which just launched out of stealth, helps financial advisors and their clients predict medical costs, and plan their finances accordingly. The platform uses proprietary algorithms developed by the startup's cofounder and Chief Data Scientist Emily Chang (formerly of 23andMe) to project out-of-pocket medical and assisted living costs based on hereditary factors, lifestyle habits and health risks. That information is shared with financial advisors to help ensure their clients are spending smartly on current healthcare costs while saving enough for long term care costs.
It starts with the Halo Assessment, which takes a client through a series of 13 questions about their hereditary health (is there heart disease in your immediate family?) and personal habits (do you smoke?). The assessment predicts how many healthy, active years a person is likely to live, as well as how long they should expect to require assisted living care, and how much they should expect to pay based on average assisted living costs. It also shows users if they're giving up any years due to unhealthy habits (such as not exercising enough). The idea is to help people realize they can control the habits that impact their longevity, said Holmes.
"What are the good choices you can make to extend life in a healthy way and minimize years that you would be disabled or not as independently-abled?" she said. "What years are you giving up early because of behaviors?"
The next step is GenivityFamily, which allows users to add family members to a "family tree," which can give financial advisors a more robust picture of the family's health and potential care costs. Financial advisors can plan yearly "check ups," which involve the entire family in the financial planning process. This is key because financial advisors are traditionally in contact with the patriarch of the family, said Holmes, while women are more likely to live longer and be caregivers.
"[Often] the Chief Medical Officer of the family is the woman," she said. "We translate that caregiving into financial costs and show how it fits into the financial plan. This also helps gets kids involved early."
What years are you giving up early because of behaviors?
Genivity, a member of the current WiSTEM cohort, recently went through the Envestnet/Yodlee fintech incubator, and have integrated their platform with Yodlee, an aggregator of bank and financial platforms. Clients can choose to share information from these accounts with financial advisors, allowing for more real-time healthcare spending analysis.
The Halo Assessment costs $2,500 per year, while GenivityFamily has tiered pricing based on number of households and level of client service, and the startup has made their API available for enterprise clients. While Holmes declined to disclose user numbers, she said they have advisors and clients using the platform as well as an enterprise client using the API, and they're in talks with a large insurer. The startup has also raised a round of angel funding.
Holmes, Chang and their product manager Ashley Flitter are also behind TapGenes, a preventative health startup that allows families to gather their herditary health risks and data in one place. While both startups are based off the same baseline algorithm, they will operate as separate entities, Holmes said.
