Newsroom

Kevin Wu MBA ’20 is CEO of the startup myHealthToday—an app and online service making doctor’s visits easier than ever for senior patients. And the idea was born at the New Venture Competition (NVC) presented annually by the UCI Paul Merage School of Business. Wu and his teammates—Jennifer Nam MBA/MD ’20, Gautam Deept MBA ’20, Ivan de Almeida MBA ’20, Parth Srivastav MBA ’20 and Ujwal Mishrikoti MBA ’20—won the competition’s consumer services track.  

Wu explained: “My teammate Jennifer Nam worked in a geriatric outpatient clinic during her fourth year of medical school. When we were brainstorming, we came up with the idea of using voice technology to help facilitate doctor’s visits for that population and enhance the experience for both patient and physician.”  

Wu and his team joined forces with their NVC mentor—Cary A. Ortiz, founding managing partner at Praetorian Venture Partners, LLC.  

“Not only was Kevin's work ethic unparalleled, proportionate to his commitment to excellence, but his ability to successfully develop and lead his executive management team adhered to the highest standards of professionalism, usually found in seasoned executives twice his age,” said Ortiz. “It truly was an honor to serve as his mentor.” 

The myHealthToday team was able to secure funding from UCI Beall Applied Innovation, and in June 2020, their company was officially incorporated.   

Their app—myHealthJournal—is a patient engagement service which empowers seniors to report their health information at any time via their phone’s voice services. Seniors can easily record information such as their symptoms and the HIPAA-compliant app parses this data into a provider-friendly format.  

“The reason why the company is special is because we focus on the senior demographic population. Most technology targets millennials or Gen Z,” Wu explained. “We really wanted to create something for the senior community that benefits their lives.”  

One of the company’s goals is to provide users with quicker access to healthcare professionals.  

“We want to help people save time during their visit to the doctor,” says Wu. “When a patient goes to the doctor, a lot of time is spent describing symptoms. With our service, a patient can log this information and send it to their medical team prior to the visit. Their doctor can then spend more time discussing proper treatment.”  

According to Brad Giafaglione, the director of experience for UCI Health, a primary complaint from the patient service department is finding ways to optimize the amount of time spent during doctor visits and improve the overall patient experience.  

 “The myHealthToday program is innovative and will support both patients and clinicians in ensuring the time spent during appointments is optimized. This will enable clinicians to spend more time developing relationships with their patients helping to enhance the patient experience,” Giafaglione said. 

“We make sure that our service is very easy to use. You don’t have to be a tech-savvy person to be able to use it,” Wu explained. “We try to make sure both the patient and the physician are engaged to enhance the patient experience.” 

Currently, myHealthToday is collaborating with UCI's Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences.

“We are now working with four computer science students,” Wu explained. “They bring their technology practice and get to apply the things they learn in school through this project.”  

myHealthToday is currently in a closed beta launch and will be available as a web app, on Google Play, the app store and on Amazon Alexa.  

###