Are you a practitioner looking for an easier way to conduct functional medicine lab testing? 

Tara Viswanathan, Co-Founder and CEO of Rupa Health, discusses with Heads Up’s Dave Korsunsky how her company simplifies this process for medical professionals.

Dave and Tara also talk about why they believe root cause medicine will eventually become the standard of care, how Rupa Health and Heads Up are educating practitioners, and the origins of Rupa Health.

Rupa Health is a company that focuses on making the lab testing process easier for practitioners, so they have more time to focus on patient care.

Tara Viswanathan graduated with a Master’s Degree in Management Science and Engineering. She achieved her Bachelor’s Degree in Finance and Operations Management at Pennsylvania University. Tara previously did product consulting for consumer health startups.

Functional Medicine

Functional medicine focuses on the biological systems in the body. A single diagnosis can have multiple causes. Ultimately, the purpose of functional medicine is to identify and treat the root cause of the disease. 

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“I’ve had complete conviction in the fact that root cause medicine is going to become the standard of care.”

– Tara Viswanathan

Follow Tara:

Twitter @TaraViswanathan

LinkedIn Tara Viswanathan

In this podcast you’ll learn:

(2:25) How Dave and Tara became interested in health through their careers in technology. 

(3:57) How Rupa Health makes functional lab testing easier. The company has over 2,000 different tests that healthcare practitioners can order within minutes. Rupa Health manages the entire patient experience including support with phlebotomy, specialized instructions, and 24-hour customer support.

(5:40) Rupa Health supports everybody from solo, independent acupuncturists to small private practices to large hospital systems. Tara breaks down how a practitioner can enroll and ease the burden of ordering patient tests.

(7:33) Patients have access to 3-month payment plans through Rupa.

(9:13) The benefits of stool testing. Dave jokes about his experience presenting the Bristol Stool Chart at a conference.

(10:12) The information you can learn from checking your urine and stool.

(11:04) Rupa Health began in January 2020. Within months the company spread to clinics in 47 states. The company is continuously releasing new features.

(12:34) Tara believes root cause medicine is going to become the standard of care. Tara wants to enable all practitioners to be able to pursue root cause medicine. Rupa first built a matching service to help pair patients with practitioners. The company then built a clinic, discovered the issues with lab testing, and decided to shut down the clinic and focus solely on lab testing.

(14:50) One of the main issues with functional labs is that many of them do not have any web-based APIs (Application Programming Interface) to pull from. These labs and patients are stuck with a bunch of PDF files. Rupa Health has helped to build services around these facilities’ current systems.

(19:00) Rupa can help doctors process all of their lab tests without having to learn everything step-by-step.

(20:10) Root cause medicine can be the future of medicine. Root causes can be microbiome environment, heavy metal toxin exposure, and more.

(22:23) Remote patient monitoring is becoming widely accepted and there are now reimbursements from the payer system. Commercial insurance covers most microbiome testing.

(24:14) Rupa Health is working on helping educate practitioners through Rupa University. These courses teach practitioners how to understand and interpret lab testing. Heads Up Health has also launched Heads Up University, which aims to serve a similar purpose.

(25:49) Dave and Tara are super involved as patients when interacting with their doctors.

(26:43) Tara’s advice to practitioners is, “It’s not easy, but it’s worth it.” You can reach out to Tara at tarav@rupahealth.com where she can explain Rupa Health to you in more detail.

References

Rupa Health

Bristol Stool Chart

Rupa University

Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) for Functional Medical Practices