By Nell Meosky Luo, CEO of our portfolio company Folia Health.
We're all different people than we were on January 1st, 2020.
We've seen terrible things, and wonderful acts of kindness. We've done our best to help, and we've felt entirely helpless. Witnessing the outer bounds of self-interest and self-service, we've wondered what it all means.
Our lives have been stripped down to the studs. So much has been taken from us, but we've also been given a rare chance to rebuild, almost from scratch, a life of meaning and time well-spent.
In many ways, this year has been a reckoning.
Nowhere has this been more true than in healthcare. Our ecosystem has been stretched to its very limits, and its possibilities have shone through, a beacon leading us to better days.
The extraordinary value of basic research has been illuminated by the tearing speed of development of our first mRNA vaccine, on the shoulders of 30 years of work on this 'brand-new' technology.
The love of service that drives many to become healthcare workers has been on full display, renewing our belief in mankind's better angels and reminding us why healthcare exists, in the first place.
And through the chaos, we've found a window in which to build a better way of care, one that makes more sense. The transformation is in early days, but finally, it seems to be here.
Taking half a day off to see a specialist for 30 minutes - a given, in faraway 2019 - has become the exception. Expecting to see the notes that your doctor wrote in your chart is now common sense, no longer radical. Fitting study participation into your life, rather than fitting your life around the demands of a study, is now possible.
As for our corner of the universe...
Imagining a world where you have every important detail about your health at your fingertips - owned by you, not the hospital, and ready to be used to receive truly personal care - has never seemed less crazy.
By tracking your observations in just 90 seconds a day, you can make a difference for your care and for people like you. At Folia, we help you harness the power of your observations through simple, multiple-choice questions - Learn more about our revolutionary technique.
What possibilities sit there, on the near horizon. We thank you for walking with us on this 2020 journey, and we wish you the brightest of New Years.
To 2021!
Sincerely,
Nell
About Nell Meosky Luo
Prior to joining the startup world, Nell worked as a management consultant for the healthcare, B2B software, and consumer goods sectors, among others. Nell attended Yale, where she focused on public health and biochemistry. Her thesis examined how health reimbursement systems and best-practice protocols affect treatment for childhood obesity in the US, UK, and Italy. She was the recipient of the Massachusetts Women in Digital Health award in 2018, and was named to the governor’s Digital Health Council Working Group & Independent Steering Committee in 2019. She is involved in multiple COVID-19 crisis projects, including a leadership role with the Partners COVID-19 Task Force on Diagnostics and founding the Citizens' Ventilator Project.
About Folia Health
Folia Health makes it possible to quickly and easily capture what you notice about your health, to unlock precision care and a new era of truly patient-centered research.