Koda Health, Houston, uses AI to help guide difficult conversations in health care, starting with end-of-life care planning. Image via kodahealthcare.com

A new Houston-based digital advanced care planning company is streamlining some of the most difficult conversations in the health care industry around palliative care.

Founded by Tatiana Fofanova, Dr. Desh Mohan, and Katelin Cherry, Koda Health uses AI to help patients create advance medical care directives and documents—such as a living will—through an easy to use web-based interface.

Koda Health uses a conversational platform where users can enter information about their values, living situations, quality of life wishes, and more while learning about different care options at their own speed. It also uses a proprietary machine learning approach that personalizes audio-video guided dialogue based on the patient's individual and cultural preferences.

The app then autogenerates legal and medical documents, which patients can notarize or electronically witness the forms through the app or on their own.

According to Fofanova, who earned her PhD in in Molecular Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and now acts as the company's CEO, what historically has been a time consuming and expensive process, through Koda Health, takes an average of 17 minutes and is completely free of charge to the end user.

"We hope to reduce any outstanding barriers to access that might exist," Fofanova says. "It is very frequently the oldest and the poorest that are the highest utilizers of health care that don't have access to these solutions."

The app is also projected to save health care systems roughly $9,500 per patient per year, as it allows for hospitals and organizations to better plan for what their patient population is seeking in end-of-life-care.

The B2B platform was born out of the TMC's Biodesign Fellowship, which tasked Koda's founding members with finding solutions to issues surrounding geriatric care in the medical center. In March 2020, Koda incorporated. Not long after ICU beds began to fill with COVID-19 patients, "galvanizing" the team's mission, Fofanova says.

"It was no longer this conceptual thing that we needed to address and write a report on. Now it was that people were winding up in the hospital at alarming rates and none of those individuals had advanced care planning in place," she says.

After accelerating the development of the product, Koda Health is now being used by health care systems in Houston, Texas, and Virginia.

The company recently received a Phase I grant of $256,000 from the National Science Foundation, which will allow Koda to deploy the platform at Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist and test it against phone conversations with 900 patients. Fofanova says the company will also use the funds to continue to develop personalization algorithms to improve Kona's interface for users.

"We want to make this a platform that mimics a high quality conversation," she says.

After Koda completes the Phase I pilot program it will then be eligible to apply for a Phase II award of up to $1 million in about a year.

Koda Health was founded by Tatiana Fofanova, Dr. Desh Mohan, and Katelin Cherry. Photos via kodahealthcare.com

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Mark Cuban calls AI ‘the greater democratizer’ for young entrepreneurs

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Texas billionaire Mark Cuban—whose investment portfolio includes Houston-based Holliball, a startup that makes and sells large inflatable holiday ornaments—believes AI is leveling the playing field for budding low-income entrepreneurs.

At the recent Clover x Shark Tank Summit in Las Vegas, the Shark Tank alum called AI “the greater democratizer.”

Cuban told Axios that free and low-cost AI tools enable disadvantaged teenagers to compete with seasoned professionals.

“Right now, if you’re a 14- to 18-year-old and you’re in not-so-good circumstances, you have access to the best professors and the best consultants,” Cuban said. “It allows people who otherwise would not have access to any resources to have access to the best resources in real time. You can compete with anybody.”

While Cuban believes AI is “the great democratizer” for low-income young people, low-income workers still face hurdles in navigating the AI landscape, according to Public Works Partners, an urban planning and consulting firm. The firm says access to AI among low-income workers may be limited due to cost, insufficient digital literacy and infrastructure gaps.

“Without adequate resources and training, these workers may struggle to adapt to AI-driven workplaces or access the educational opportunities necessary to acquire new skills,” Public Works Partners said.

Texas 2036, a public policy organization focused on the state’s future, reported in January AI jobs in Texas are projected to grow 27 percent over the next decade. The number 2036 refers to the year when Texas will celebrate its bicentennial.

As for the current state of AI, Cuban said he doesn’t think the economy is witnessing an AI bubble comparable to the dot-com bubble, which lasted from 1998 to 2000.

“The difference is, the improvement in technology basically slowed to a trickle,” Cuban said of the dot-com era. “We’re nowhere near the improvement in technology slowing to a trickle in AI.”

CPRIT hires MD Anderson official as chief cancer prevention officer

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The Austin-based Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, which provides funding for cancer research across the state, has hired Ruth Rechis as its chief prevention officer. She comes to CPRIT from Houston’s University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, where she led the Cancer Prevention and Control Platform.

Before joining MD Anderson, Rechis was a member of the executive leadership team at the Livestrong Foundation, an Austin-based nonprofit that supports people affected by cancer.

“Ruth has widespread connections throughout the cancer prevention community, both in Texas and across the nation,” CPRIT CEO Kristen Doyle said in a news release. “She is a long-term passionate supporter of CPRIT, and she is very familiar with our process, programs, and commitment to transparency. Ruth is a terrific addition to the team here at CPRIT.”

Rechis said that by collaborating with researchers, policymakers, public health leaders and community partners, CPRIT “can continue to drive forward proven prevention strategies that improve health outcomes, lower long-term costs, and create healthier futures for all.”

At MD Anderson, Rechis and her team worked with more than 100 organizations in Texas to bolster cancer prevention initiatives at clinics and community-based organizations.

Rechis is a longtime survivor of Hodgkin lymphoma, a type of cancer that affects the lymph nodes, which are part of a person’s immune system.