Health Tech Founders: The Future of Care Is Personalized, Proactive—and AI-Powered

Mission & Motivation

• Jonathan Sorlin (Function Health) aims to provide "100 healthy lives," driven by personal health challenges and his father's cancer survival, revealing the high cost and inefficiency of traditional healthcare access.
• Daniel (Slingshot AI/Ash) founded his company to address a severe mental health care gap, citing statistics that 54% of individuals with mental illness receive no care.
• Both founders observed a cultural shift where consumers are taking control of their health outside traditional systems, moving from reactive "broken body" models to proactive prevention.

Market Data & Pain Points

• There is a reported ratio of over 10,000 people for every available therapist, creating a massive accessibility deficit.
• Jonathan Haidt's book The Anxious Generation notes that two-thirds of college students report feeling anxious more than half the time.
• Function Health's MVP development required tens of thousands of dollars and over 100 hours of personal effort to achieve baseline health parity, highlighting systemic friction.
• Slingshot AI projects a goal of facilitating nearly 1 billion lab tests within the next year.

Product Philosophy & User Experience (U-X)

• The teams reject standard "UX" in favor of "U-X" (Human Experience), prioritizing bringing offline biological and emotional data online rather than relying solely on digital activity signals.
• Ash (Slingshot AI) avoids replicating human therapist scheduling; instead, it measures engagement via "hourly active use" rather than daily active use, anticipating a shift toward constant, integrated health monitoring.
• Function Health utilizes AI to transform vague doctor visits into data-driven consultations, providing "signal" rather than "noise" to allow physicians to execute on their specialized training.
• Ash employs a "help people get better, not stay" strategy, actively pushing users out of the app once goals are met, contrasting with standard retention models designed to create addiction.

AI Capabilities & Differentiation

• Ash's AI is designed to challenge users and foster a therapeutic alliance rather than merely validating feelings or acting as a sycophant, a departure from typical ChatGPT interactions.
• The AI allows for rapid vulnerability; users open up faster with the AI than with human therapists because they know the interaction is private and non-judgmental.
• Function Health's AI interprets complex biomarkers into actionable health insights, addressing user confusion over raw data and medical jargon.
• Unlike other chatbots where long-term usage often reduces human connection, Ash reports that users statistically increase their connection to other humans over time.

Human-AI Collaboration & Ethics

• Both founders view AI as a tool to augment, not replace, human doctors and therapists, specifically to reduce burnout and increase the efficiency of human providers.
• Therapists are increasingly adopting these tools; many therapists now use Ash themselves to process their own challenges or recommend it to patients for skill building.
• A core ethical constraint is maintaining user autonomy; the AI avoids giving direct advice on critical life decisions (e.g., ending a relationship) to ensure users learn lessons and maintain their sense of self-determination.
• The founders argue that AI can make healthcare more "deflationary" by solving problems before they require expensive human intervention.

Future Outlook & Trends

• The industry is moving from a "daily active use" metric to an "hourly active use" model where personal health becomes the central, continuous context for AI interaction.
• Slingshot AI is training new foundation models for psychology almost every two days, emphasizing a continuous improvement loop over static product launches.
• Function Health expects to have served nearly 1 billion lab tests by this time next year, indicating rapid scaling of data-driven health interventions.
• The founders predict a future where AI reduces the stigma of mental health care and allows humans to value in-person connections and "craft" even more deeply by offloading routine analysis to machines.