The Redox Podcast 29: Vida on virtual chronic care and mental health

Looking back at 2020, we might say that this was the year that changed everything in healthcare. If that’s the case, Vida will have likely played a big role in this change. They’re focused on some of the most costly areas of healthcare in chronic care management and mental health. And, they sell to payers and employers who, with incentives to keep patients out of costly situations, are playing a bigger and bigger role in actual patient care.

My guest today is Stephanie Tilenius, the founder and CEO of Vida Health. She founded Vida in January of 2014 (right around the same time as Redox, by the way) after a storied career in silicon valley having worked at eBay, PayPal, Google, and as an executive in residence at Kleiner Perkins. Since then, Vida has raised $83M including a recent $25m round in April and has, according to LinkedIn, nearly 500 employees. Vida is a virtual care platform that treats a whole person – and a whole population – by addressing a full range of chronic conditions and mental conditions that accompany them. Vida is deployed in Fortune 500 companies and large insurance carriers and health plans. 

We were able to talk a bit about how Vida actually interacts with patients and changes their behavior, some of their outcomes, and the shifting dynamics in the industry. Big thanks to Stephanie for coming on the show as well as to everyone at Vida for making healthcare a little bit better.

Key Moments

01:22 - How and why Stephanie went from consumer products to healthcare 05:49 - Onboarding and triaging users 08:16 - Mental health and chronic conditions are tied together 11:38 - Measuring outcomes at Vida 14:30 - Selling into the payer space 16:18 - Since COVID, payers have increased demand for digital health 18:13 - Telehealth reimbursement parody discussed 19:20 - Vida’s $25M latest round of funding 21:14 - How payers are shifting towards value-based care 26:10 - Potential channel conflicts with community providers

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