Founders Readers - Ep 41 - Dr Bill Kapp of Fountain Life
The Founders Keepers podcast, podded
The Founders Readers podnotes are not a transcript, but accompany the weekly podcast detailing key insights from that exact conversation
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This week, we’re speaking with Dr Bill Kapp about his company, Fountain Life: Claiming to provide an innovative, fully integrated platform delivering best-in-class predictive, preventative, personalized, and data-driven health
💬 Quote from the pod:
“The point is, we don't use the latest technologies to detect disease early. And similarities inside of aviation and medicine are very, very similar. If we adopt technology, if we adopt procedures and, and policies like they do in the aviation industry, we would lower our accident rate or our false, or I would say our adverse outcome rate in medicine tremendously.”
🔑 Key insights from the episode:
On the “elephant in the room” for modern medicine: Bill claims that while public health has advanced enormously in the past few centuries, and while humanity has doubled its collective life expectancy, “what we haven't done is address the elephant in the room, which is that most, if not all, of the disease processes… that we treat today are chronic conditions, which by definition are not symptomatic until late stage” and that “we have a scarcity mentality in healthcare cause…We wait until the, the symptoms manifest”, with the knock-on quality of life and economic implications of late-stage treatment.
How his background as a pilot influenced his business mindset: Bill claims that his approach in aeronautics framed his approach to identify technologies that can be used to detect diseases at the earliest possible stage “while you're still asymptomatic” in order to prevent and potentially reverse these complications: “Our focus (at Fountain Life) is to create a paradigm shift in healthcare, meaning use advanced technologies… to then detect disease at its earliest stage and reverse it or treat it or cure its earliest stages”.
The problems with data sourcing in healthcare: Bill argues that one of the core problems with developing healthcare algorithms is that physician clinical data is the main source, but is biased by patients not consulting a doctor until the point at which they are symptomatic: Meaning a large group of asymptomatic individuals at risk of, or with, disease aren’t captured: “70% of people that die from a cancer today die from a cancer that we don't have a screening test for. So once again, you know, we can understand why the insurance system doesn't work”. Which, in turn, is what Fountain Life are aiming for in terms of asymptomatic screening - “We want to create this data set that allows us to start to do that”.
On democratising their offering: Bill acknowledges that “while what we do at our centers is great, it's only great for people who can afford it”. As such, he is driven to democratise access to preventative healthcare and to Fountain Life’s services in the US and beyond: One of the ways being through their Fountain Health Insurance company. This has also allowed the company to scale dramatically in the 8 months since launch - having been approached by mixed use developments that want to “embed healthcare inside their ecosystem… we can lower healthcare cost if we can get in front of the problems before they start… in the United States, most of the health insurance plans don't function on prevention”.
The science underpinning the model: Fountain Life’s digital solution is largely based on biomarker validation and detection, creating individual datasets that build a user’s digital twin that Bill hopes will ultimately mean “on a day-to-day basis you can consult a portable solution on your phone”, evaluating metrics from sleep patterns through to diet and environmental pollutants with “a constant feedback loop on how you can improve your health”.
On hiring pilots: Bill cites that “we have a lot of pilots in the organization”, and is a former Air Force flight surgeon himself. He strives to adopt the principles of the aviation industry into his business practice, which also focuses on hazard prevention - “[they said] let's create the technology and let's create the protocols and procedures to detect problems before they occur” - but is equally embracing of technology where instead of pilots flying a plane, “We pay pilots to get your to your destination safely. And we train them for emergencies… We should have our doctors trained for the emergencies, but significantly compensated for keeping you healthy”.
On institutional inertia: Bill claims that there remains a strong need for a robust health system, and the goal for the physician should be to try to keep patients out of the system as long as possible, but is largely dependent on process improvement and overcoming institutional inertia. He argues to an extent that patient involvement in preventative healthcare is one approach to supporting this change - “a patient who is fully quantified with feedback loops where they know what the status of their health is at any given time is much more engaged with their health.”
On ChatGPT and health: Bill claims that while large language models are fascinating, “they're not very good for healthcare”, given that the product has been trained on a limited dataset and not all the data of which has been validated: He believes that, ultimately, it will be necessary to “tag” data that is most relevant, which will directly require physician input in order to train better models: “We don't believe that AI is gonna replace your doctor, but we do believe your doctor who's not using AI will be replaced”.
On the future of healthcare technology: Since Fountain Life’s launch in 2021, Bill claims that the technology they use has advanced dramatically, and is interested in where will the resources come to be able to continue to advance at scale: Not just financially, but also in terms of understanding and validating new data and research. He talks about Harvard spinout, Open Evidence, which reads and analyses literature for statistical validity: “I think the point is that you could actually have access to the latest technology and be able to filter it.. those are the tools that I think will make doctors much, much better.”
On what he’d do differently: While Bill claims to love being a physician and orthopedic surgeon, one of his core motivators for moving into business was his frustration with the increasing expense of healthcare in the U.S. for patients, citing that 60% of current bankruptcies in the United States are due to healthcare bills. He states, quite simply “It's the system we live in, so it has to be modified or we need an alternative delivery platform… you know, things that I would do differently… I might move faster”.
📖 Background:
Founded: 2019
Location: HQ in Naples, Florida, USA
IPO status: Private
Industry: Wellness and Fitness Services
Market size: USD $4.5 trillion
Employees: 51-200 employees
Funding stage: Unknown
Total funding to date: USD $15 million
🔍 What:
A a provider of fully-integrated platforms delivering predictive, preventative, personalized healthcare to users by claiming to use cutting-edge artificial intelligence to mine and process healthcare data that will “find and address cancer, cardiac, metabolic, and neurodegenerative diseases before they can influence your lifespan and vitality”.
Located across four centers: New York, Naples, Orlando, Dallas.
🔧 How:
Technology: Their proprietary HIPPA-compliant, encrypted digital twin technology is the core of their analytical offering.
Membership subscription business model: Fountain Life’s Apex Membership involves an annual upfront fee of USD $19,500 with offerings including a full-body MRI; genetic sequencing tests; bone scans and other consults with healthcare professionals to help users achieve “peak longevity” and to provide the data that underpins their insights.
A private health insurance plan through Fountain Life covers the main service offering and additional treatments.
🏙 Company tagline:
“Changing healthcare from REACTIVE to PROACTIVE”
👉 Find out more about Fountain Life:
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