Hello and welcome to season three of Rooted in Reaching where we talk with dreamers, doers and difference makers building an innovative future right here in the South Bend Elkhart region.

Entrepreneurs know that where we're rooted matters and where we're reaching matters even more.

Today we're talking to Dr. Todd Stillson who took years of rural healthcare experience in Marshall county to build Chatrx, an innovative AI driven doctor in your pocket.

Let's dive in.

We are thrill thrilled today to have en route and reaching Dr. Todd Stillson, the founder and creator of Chatrx, which is.

I'm going to read what you just told me a minute ago.

The family doctor of the future.

Yes.

Okay.

Now if that's not intriguing, I don't know what is.

So we need some context for the audience.

What is Chatrx, who are you and what is Chatrx?

Yeah.

So let's start with your audience that I'm a family doctor from Marshall county, worked as a rural family doctor for 30 years practicing the full spectrum of family medicine.

And so I retired.

You've seen it all?

I've seen it all and been in the trenches, managed 5,000 patients, 24, seven doctor, deliver babies, take care of patients in the hospital.

Truly lived, ate, drank, slept.

Family medicine in its purest sense.

Okay.

So I retired from that gig about a year ago.

Okay.

And I knew for a couple of years that I was planning to retire from that and then iterate myself and do something a little different.

That's what we're going to talk about with Chatrx today.

Right.

The idea of Chatterx been germinating in my mind for about a decade, but it takes the right time for a startup to begin.

There's a whole timing sequence that develops and for me that included though the idea that I would have time away from a 247 job as a, as a rural doctor.

So that was key for me.

But that's my background.

So what I started was a 247 telemedicine company.

I was going to say you went from it.

You went from a very intense full time 247 job as a practicing doctor to a 247 job as an entrepreneur.

That's exactly right.

But here's the thing, that's an easy iteration for me because I've done it for 30 years.

Right.

That's not a leap.

But here's the difference and this is what the profound difference that this is that I built a product that's a telemedicine product that's very niche based.

Okay.

We treat 39 common infections and it's asynchronous.

That means that you are not scheduling an appointment to see me.

I am managing the process through the power of technology through a five minute chat experience for the consumer to get their common conditions treated rapidly.

This is not full spectrum family medicine like I did for 30 years.

A very focused niche area which is.

Critical for an entrepreneur.

Right.

Start narrow and go deep where you're good.

And go deep.

So, so good.

I want to ask many more questions about that, but again, give us the high level Overview.

What is ChatRx?

What does it do?

How does it.

Yeah, so ChatRx is a SaaS product that is based upon a software as a medical device that's FDA approved that I created and invented over the past year that powers an experience for a patient to to use our free symptom checker from anywhere in the world to determine if they have one of the 39 conditions that we treat.

It's a triage system.

Okay.

That's based on chat and history only.

No examination, no video, no appointments.

In that experience.

Do you want me to pause?

Well, walk me through what that would.

Look like for a user.

And before I do that, I'll just tell you there's three phases.

Symptom check.

Got it.

Medical environment where we actually grab some medical data from you to allow a prescription to be generated if you have a qualified condition and then that gets sent to the pharmacy.

So this is three steps.

If you have check symptoms, medical information, send a prescription to the pharmacy.

Okay, so now we'll come back to the beginning of the symptom checker idea.

So a symptom checker is really not an audio visual based experience that, that people are most used to nowadays in telemedicine.

So telemedicine, you know, you make an appointment with the telemedicine company or even your local doctor can do telemedicine medicine visits, but it requires high level technology.

If you've ever done teleconferences from anywhere in the world, you sometimes Internet doesn't work well for you because it doesn't have the bandwidth to do that.

So we're taking a concept of sort of a visit and moving it out of the audio visual arena and moving it to the chat based arena which.

Folks are familiar with.

They're very familiar with respect, especially your gen zers out there who love this.

Okay.

And the reality is though that I know from having practiced medicine for as long as I have that most of these common conditions are history based.

I know when I walk into an exam room based upon your history that you likely have a condition just by history.

And the examination that I do or any lab testing that's associated is purely kind of cursory, sort of like just confirming the diagnosis.

Okay.

And so it doesn't require a high level of sophistication to determine common infections.

Now it certainly still though does require an algorithm.

Right.

So this is not a.

We're not talking about a company that has an antibiotic vending machine.

That's not the goal here.

The goal is to help use AI through an AI agent that I've trained from a proprietary standpoint and to walk through a series of chat questions that literally in a couple minutes will help you determine if you have a condition that we can treat.

We call that our qualified conditions.

Right.

And you mentioned there were 39 of those.

There's 39 of those conditions that ranges from UTIs to bronchitis to sinus infection to pink eye to STI.

Sexually transmitted infections.

You really name the long spectrum of them.

So I want to ask how you determine those 39 qualified conditions.

But before I do so, I just, I want to walk one more time through this.

So I'm on a chat, I log in and I say doctor.

Well, they're not every actual doctor there, but the.

My avatar's Dr. Todd.

Your avatar is there and has been trained based on your years of experience.

That's correct.

And I type in I've got a fever, I've got a headache.

And then the chatbot asks some follow up questions.

You're going to get a really dialogue just like you were texting me as a friend and family member.

I buil this because here, guess what?

I also know this part that people have trouble getting in, getting into the doctor, into the clinic, even my own clinic back in the past 30 years when you're sick.

And so what I learned and experienced over the years were patients will find a way to get a hold of you.

And what they do is they chat.

Right.

They send you a text message.

Hey, doc, I tried to get in today.

I couldn't.

They can't see me for three days.

I got something simple.

Can you just take care of this?

Right, right.

This is a.

And I'll ask them a couple of questions.

Hey, is your throat sore?

Easy to imagine in three questions.

I've got it figured out.

Let me send this script in for you.

That's the old Friends and family network, but there's a lot of risk and liability for it.

It's not a Good process for the patient or the doctor, but it's a reality about how it works in the real world.

Okay.

So now let's formalize that idea into this experience that I'm talking about that allows us to really make sure the diagnosis is accurate and correct through your symptoms.

So literally for the consumer or user, they're going to feel like they're chatting with me.

They provide me the information, I send them back some questions, we go through this whole back and forth process.

Yeah.

So how, how is the risk mitigated there?

Because it sounds a lot like that friends and family thing where they're texting you.

But you said there was a lot of liability.

The risks are mitigated in the following way.

We have four categories that every one of these experiences will fit into a qualified condition, which is one of the 39 conditions we treat.

Got it.

A non qualified condition, which is generically something that's not in our space, we don't treat that.

So we're gonna recommend you see a teledoctor that's more broad than us, a clinic, an urgent care, your primary care, an er.

Okay.

Number three, we have high risk conditions that require emergent attention.

We are going to identify those and say you need to see somebody immediately in one of those environments.

So if I'm having a heart attack and I'm describing to the chat bot that I these symptoms that are very clearly aligned with a heart attack, you're going to tell me, yeah, you like.

We'Ll stop the chat right there and say you need to go to the emergency room for this condition.

Okay.

Okay.

And then number four, we have viral conditions that don't need medications.

Okay.

And so we're not going to try and prescribe you medicine for a virus.

For example, for example, a viral gastroenteritis when you're throwing up and have diarrhea.

Okay.

That'd be a good classic example.

You know, we've all probably had those where they last 24, 36 hours, you feel crummy, you're not quite sure you know what to do about it.

We'll provide the kind of outpatient or home based remedies for that.

But here's the other feature that we have in our product that's based on 30 years of experience for those particular issues.

Among the other conditions that we treat, we're providing a note for work or school because here's the reality for you.

If you're sick with a stomach virus and you know, you know, it's not like rocket science.

I know I've got a stomach virus, but you miss work.

And guess what many of the workplaces require nowadays somebody misses work.

Some kind of note from a doctor that says you were really sick.

Okay.

And what do you have to do as a consumer?

You're like, oh crud, I got to get into the doctor today or tomorrow.

Miss another day of work.

Go to the doctor and say, doctor, I've got a virus.

I'm feeling a little better today.

I just need a note for work.

And you got to pay 150 bucks for that.

Right, right, right, right.

So in this case, that's stupidity.

And Cate, there's no medicine.

There's no medicine, but we're gonna get you that.

There is this like now for, for.

Those other 39 conditions, we provide notes too.

That's all part of our, our rodeo with that as well.

But that's a space that the average consumer often finds himself in that predicament of what do I do about the virus when I have to get a note?

So those are our four spaces.

But they're very risk averse.

So we're knowing we know what we treat, how we get to those diagnoses, and then if it's not in those boxes, we're going to send you somewhere else to get that treatment.

Okay.

And now I do want to come back to a question that comes up along those lines.

Doctors ask me this all the time when I talk about my product.

But even the average consumer will.

What's the accuracy rate?

How safe is this?

Right?

Yep.

So I'm going to tell you some data that was done in the last year that shows talks about the accuracy of doctors versus the accuracy of AI for making diagnoses average family doctors.

Apples.

Apples.

Comparing AI to family doctors.

Family doc gets about 75 to 80% of the time.

They get it right.

Okay.

Okay.

Pretty good.

I mean that's about what you expect.

Not 100%.

AI gets about 90% effective.

Okay.

Based on the same inputs.

Yep, based on the same inputs.

Interestingly enough, doctor plus AI make AI available to them, they still score around 75, 80%.

Because doctors are a little resistant to manage letting AI help them.

Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know.

Better or something.

Right.

That's okay.

They don't trust it totally.

Now if you take our system.

Our system, we're looking at a 90 to 95%.

That's our stated goal and that's what we've created our symptom checker to be in those 39 diagnoses.

Yeah.

90 to 95% accurate.

Yeah.

The average listener may go, why don't you shoot for 100%?

Well, it'd be great to be 100%, but you're dealing with humans.

It's never going to be a hundred percent.

Okay, Right.

But we're talking about a high accuracy rate when it comes to the symptom checker.

And that's what we document, that's what we perform.

Certainly above average, right?

Definitely above average.

So, okay, I want to ask you.

No, no, that's all fantastic and that's a really interesting evidence there.

Uh, I think all of us who have been to the doctor recently and who have used ChatGPT or another to see how we're feeling.

My son did this the other day.

He's 15.

Shoulder was hurting.

He was typing into ChatGPT.

What's wrong with my shoulder?

So the 39.

What do you call them?

39 diagnoses.

Diagnoses.

Where did those come from?

So Those came from Dr. Todd Stillson.

Because I've done this long enough to know what the common, easily identifiable by history problems are that patients get on a regular basis that they need treatment for.

I know because I've lived this life for 30 years.

Okay, so this is roughly you for 30 years.

These, these are the 39 symptoms I see.

I call them garden variety time or some.

Some high percentage.

So dealing with entrepreneurs, not the regular list.

The consumer listening to this probably, right?

So listen, in medicine, we call these easy visits, okay?

In medicine, we call these cherry picking visits, okay?

Because they're so easy compared to the complexity of what we deal with with patients all day long.

We love seeing some of these patients on our schedule because they're easy peasy, right?

You don't have to use many brain cells to figure it out.

Right.

And I spend most of my time in those visits talking about their kids and their family and how life's going than I do about the diagnosis, because they're that easy.

Now take a family doctor or any doctor who's busy, like, they're all crunching, they're all working, hoofing it as hard as they can.

And then you have the patient call in and say, I've got a yeast infection.

Okay?

I need to a woman call, I have a yeast infection.

Can you get me in?

So I get checked and confirm it and get treated.

That's what the standard of care is to do.

And you go, I can't get him in.

I'm booked.

Fourth of July, he's coming on Friday.

I can't get.

What am I gonna do and you feel bad as a doctor, you feel bad.

You know that what they need is that.

Bingo.

And so you're faced with this dilemma.

Do I, do I work them in?

Or B, do I just kind of don't even ask any questions here, here, send in a medicine forum Because I'm just going to be, make it easy.

Okay.

Or better, can you have a system like we have where it's really more of an automated consumer directed system that makes sure they have what they need and get the proper treatment?

Okay.

Offer for free.

Yep, yep.

All for free.

All for free.

Yeah.

So questions about that as well, but I wanted to back up.

So you, you said you've had this idea about 10 years.

AI wasn't really on the scene 10 years ago.

So was this a, was this an opportunity, right time, right place, kind of moment?

Huge opportunity, right time, right place.

So the, the, the stars aligned in the following way.

Direct to consumer healthcare has come on the scene in the last five years.

We see the hims and hers and rows and all the other obesity medicine places that are, you know, everybody's marketing directly to the consumer and taking the insurance to a large extent out of that equation, we see direct primary care emerging in a lot of communities.

Okay.

So again, removing the insurance out of the equation, my product removes the insurance out of the equation.

It flattens it.

Just to me and you.

Me and you.

That's it.

Yeah.

Okay.

So number two, Covid brought in telemedicine.

So Covid acceptance accelerated the, the adoption of telemedicine that now has become an acceptable normal standard in the stack of healthcare options that consumers kind of consider reasonable.

Yeah, sure.

I'm sure consumers became much more comfortable with that idea because that was the.

Only option we had for a while.

AI technology came in on top of that.

Now in the last few years to allow us to really accelerate how the knowledge industry like I have in medicine, can now be scaled up to be applied to what, everyone, Everywhere.

Yeah.

Okay.

And so you take all of those things together and that provides the right environment for it.

Now back 10, 10 years ago in a medical clinic like mine, as you can imagine, was very, very busy to manage the very, very busyness of it.

I created what's called standing orders.

So all of my staff knew if X happened, do Y, okay, I'll always approve Y. I always sign off on Y.

You don't need to ask me, you just do Y.

Okay.

Those are called standing orders.

Okay.

And so we create this hardwired scripting.

So you had created a Very early paper based, paper based version.

And doctors all over the country know that hack that I just said and do it all the time when they're clinics and with their staff, usually if they're smart, they do because it makes life a lot better.

Yeah, that hack was going on now.

What happened was we had a influenza epidemic hit or, you know, outbreak hit the community.

So now managing 5,000 patients, our phone log is jammed with people.

I'm sick, I got cough, I got achy all over and we have no place to see these people.

The er, the urgent care was gummed up with all of it as well.

Right.

And so what I did was I created a history based for my staff.

If the patient has this, this, this, this and this.

Okay.

They've got influenza based on the.

Based on a phone conversation.

Based on a phone conversation.

Based upon a phone conversation and history alone.

And I would say that means you have influenza.

We're going to just send the script into the pharmacy for you.

No need to come in, no need to do anything else.

We've got you.

Right, okay.

Right.

Well, that definitely got the wheels turning in my brain, like, hmm, this is really cool.

It could work in this emergency situation.

Yeah, this might be replicatable for other things in the future.

Now all those conversions of things I mentioned happened, including the fourth one, which is now I had time retiring to be able to put my mind and brain into it.

Yeah.

So that makes sense.

It seems like there was a fairly big leap there in terms of the technology piece of it though.

You were going from paper and phone calls to AI.

How did you do that?

Like, where did the expertise come from?

Yeah, that's a good question.

To adopt that.

I've always been early adopter.

Number one, I have no fear of early adoption.

And number two, I've always been just a confident person and thankfully have some intelligence that allows me to just say, you know what, I'm going to develop a prototype for this.

Okay, why not?

The tech is here.

So what I did was I orchestrated in my mind, developed a workflow for what it would look like to create this.

I went and identified a developer who had developed the prototype for me.

Is this possible?

We forged the development, we created the prototype.

The prototype was like, yeah, this is doable.

And as soon as I knew that was doable, okay.

Then all of a sudden I'm off to the races with that whole process of really starting a business, starting moving it from the idea into the MVP stage, which is just where we're at today.

A year later now assembled, you know, 10 plus people around me working as hard as they can for us to take care of patients in the market.

I am curious about your team too, before we get to the team though.

So once you realize it was possible.

So you were, you were working with a developer and it needed to be trained.

I think a lot of us hear about training AI, but I don't know, many of us know what does that entail.

In my mind, I'm imagining you talking to it or taking 30 years worth of doctor's notes, scanning them all and dropping them into.

This is a great question.

And here's the deal.

So there's sort of a corner in the market for AI with several companies out there.

You know, you talk about Alphabet, you talk about Microsoft, OpenAI and then the Chinese company.

There's a few, you know, there's bigger players out here.

And this has been a big learning curve for me this past year.

Right.

Because AI is a generic term.

All right.

So you have to.

I had to identify which of those companies that I believe was best suited for my medical case use.

Turns out OpenAI is the best company for that medical case case use.

They, they sort of list in that direction in terms of their LLM stack.

Okay.

And very good.

Just out of the box, so to speak.

Okay.

That's Claude, right?

I think.

Well, Claude uses OpenAI, but Claude is even a more sophisticated version of that, a more humanized version of it.

We chose to take more of the generic OpenAI.

So Claude again.

Got it.

If you think of clause like OpenAI made into a more humanized form, it's easier sort of an interface, if you will.

But in the background, in the background, technology is working.

That's the same infrastructure like the electric company, so to speak.

They all get poured in there.

Got it.

So that's the same one that you chose?

Yeah, so we chose open OpenAI and then begin to train that OpenAI in a proprietary way with the specific diagnoses.

You work your way backwards.

What are the symptoms?

And so I literally, I have long big documents that you train in vector files with what are the symptoms, what are the diagnoses, and what are the problems that all create and land a person into a particular condition?

Like pink eye.

Yeah, Pink eye would be a great example.

Right.

What are, what are the finite symptoms that you get when you have pink eye?

Well, they're, they're finite.

They're there.

But red eyes, goopsy stuff in your eye.

Yeah, I mean, there's, it's, it's not a super Complex list.

Right.

But it's a list nonetheless.

There is a list of known identifiable.

Right.

And you begin training your AI agent with that.

Then what you do is you have what's called a rag model.

Okay.

A rag model is sort of like.

Think of it like my is Dr. Stilson's brain.

Okay.

And this is my brain has to do with not only making the diagnosis, but when you move into the second stage of our product, it is choosing the medicine.

What's the four shrink order of medicines that I would choose for somebody?

What are the doses of those medicines?

What's the dosing for the person's medical conditions?

How do you figure out their allergies, what's their weight?

Which pharmacy do they want to use?

All of that knowledge is, is put into what's called a rag form.

Okay.

So our open AI then takes the information of the diagnosis that's proprietary, created specifically for us, and then runs it through that reg system and brings it back around to apply it to the consumer.

Okay.

And again, that's.

Require.

Is this the step where you're gathering additional information?

Yeah, we're giving your age your weight.

Yeah.

The consumers feels like they're just giving us additional medical information.

But for me, I'm building the stack of the data on them that I'm able to apply to that rags system.

Got it.

That pulls it even further through in a very specific way.

Yeah.

We've got a whole big health stack on this.

Okay.

A big, big health stack to make all this happen.

I'm.

What do you mean by that?

What's a big, big health stack?

A health stack is all of the APIs that are stacked on top of one another to make all the things I just described happen magically.

Okay.

It's not just OpenAI doing that.

There's a lot of APIs that are used to stack together to make that work.

As an example, I'm going to tell you the tail end.

We partnered with a pharmacy pharmaceutical company called Axe Pharmaceuticals.

That's kind of like goodrx.

Okay.

You think about at the end, I'm going to help the consumer choose the right medicine.

I'm giving them a choice, by the way of two medicines to choose from.

So.

And I'm also providing to them the price point, the cash based price point for that prescription at the pharmacy they choose.

That is helpful.

Okay.

And it includes a coupon system for.

For free.

So they get to choose the medicine?

Yeah, they also get to choose the price point in the medicine.

And they.

And we have that all architected into the system so that we make sure for a consumer, it feels like you're getting the least expensive experience possible to get your condition treated.

Okay.

All that's just the magic of it.

And I.

And for consumers, I don't want to bore them with all the details of what it takes to say, stack that up.

But we've chosen as an example, again, a consumer doesn't pay till the end.

They get to the end, they choose their medicine.

It's the by way, the medicine, not inclusive in the price.

They're going to pay that at the pharmacy, but then they just pay $20 for the experience or $10 for a note if they need a note as well.

Yep.

And hit the send, hit the pay button and.

Okay, well.

Yeah, so.

So you got to that.

Because I was wondering, how does you know you're cutting the insurance company out?

They're not involved in this case.

They are not involved.

But you also need to make money.

Yeah.

So great question.

So let me just, let me pause right there and say, yeah, it's a business, it needs to make money.

Yes.

But Marty, here's the deal.

I've had a great life as a doctor.

I love what I've done.

I'm financially secure.

I created this product in mind with do good, do what's best for people.

I've seen that in things and it.

Is a truth about me and why this company exists.

It is not to make a gazillion dollars from people.

Sure, okay.

And it's a great idea.

I know it's a great idea, but.

And it could make a gazillion dollars.

But that's not why I'm doing this.

I'm doing this to get consumers and the real people of the world.

Yeah.

What they need, when they need it.

I am sure they're grateful for that because so many of us feel like we're paying, oh my gosh, huge portions of our towards healthcare and a growing amount, a real burden for a lot of families.

So what I'm doing with this product, I'm not adding to that burden.

I'm actually lowering the burden.

The cost to the consumer to get that healthcare is gonna go down.

Is it like you have to be behind it though, Right?

An actual doctor.

That is correct.

Has to sign off on it.

And that's the power of me being the founder, is that I have a mistake medical license.

And so that brings me to like our launch point as an example.

We started what we call in the Stilson bubble of local Plymouth.

Okay.

With people that are Very tied to me that are interested in it.

Sure.

But we're expanding pretty quickly in the next few months to Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, broadly, those states that I have licenses in.

I see.

Okay.

Chicago, Detroit, Indianapolis.

Big markets that will descend and begin to market to them and the consumers in those markets.

But then our goal is to go national.

So I already have like 12 additional licenses for the Midwest and the Plains states because that's going to be our continued march of growth.

You mean you have additional licenses like you've brought on staff or you have them yourself?

I have them myself.

So I have 15 states medical licenses so I can provide care.

That's an FTC rule that I have to have a license to provide care in those.

But I'm it.

I'm the only guy doing this.

So that's why this is another profound part of this.

Asynchronous care allows me to provide care simultaneously to thousands of patients.

Thousands.

In my old clinic, I see patients every 15 minutes.

There's a finite schedule.

I could fit in 35, 40 patients a day to do that.

In this model, I can see thousands simultaneously in an asynchronous manner.

Yeah.

And there's no like.

Right.

So thousands are going through.

Do you.

The system you trusted enough 100% as hard as.

You don't need to go in and review?

Well, no, but we will review them.

So let's come back then too.

So is system so hardwired that the safety and quality I know is right?

Okay.

Yeah.

Greater than 90% accuracy with the diagnosis.

We're not going to be an antibiotic vending machine.

I know the right medicine, right dose is going to get chosen.

However, it's a continuous auditing process that you have to do.

So every day.

There's an auditing process that we work through as a team to make sure that all of those metrics are being followed and are accurate, that there's no deviation to that.

So it's a continuous process.

Just like any business has a continuous process of improvement in quality.

Yeah.

Is there a feedback loop from the consumer?

Absolutely, there's a feedback loop.

How can get better or.

Yeah.

So I have a chief marketing officer.

Officer.

That's his whole gig.

Okay.

And he'll.

He'll eventually.

He's a fractional chief marketing officer.

Eventually evolve into our chief customer success person.

Probably.

Great.

All of that feedback loop is critical to the success of a SaaS company.

Yeah.

This is not.

This product is not about me.

It's not about Chatrx per se.

In my mind, it's about the consumer.

It is one of our value statements.

Patients and consumers first.

Okay.

And we're building this and seeking their feedback so that it's always best for them.

Yeah, yeah, that's great.

I'm going to challenge you for half a second on that though, because you say it's not about you and yet it feels like the entire thing hinges on you.

Well, it does.

Right now, in a reality, I am the, you know, like any founder, I am very much at the heart of it.

Right, okay.

And so it could be.

Be done without me.

Your license is at the heart of it.

That is true.

That is exactly right.

The fact that you are a licensed medical doctor in X number of states.

So.

So we're talking about the direct consumer version of this.

And that's where the, that's where we begin the journey.

Direct to consumer.

I will tell you, Marty, that the biggest opportunity is the enterprise model.

Okay.

The bigger opportunity is entering into the, the medical side and partnering with hospitals, medical clinics, insurance companies, et cetera, where we have an API that allows that me that was in the driver's seat for the direct to consumer version now is replaced by the doctor in each one of those environments.

And they sort of get that same role that I've had.

But we have the API version, white label version, all sorts of partnership versions that allow us to take this and massively send it out to people, all.

So healthcare system and in Boise, Idaho could adopt the technology.

White label, white label it, put their.

Doctors in the driver's seat, develop the software to support that.

Right.

And make that happen.

And then that doctor is sort of doing what I'm doing and getting the magic of it themselves.

Okay.

And at the end of the day, that's a consumer oriented version of that.

So the doctor in Boise, in the medical facility in Boise had the same issue that exists everywhere in the country right now.

Access to care.

Right.

Study just came out.

It's the average, average appointment time for a doctor, family doctor, 14 days, urban, and in some urban areas, as much as 60 days.

Okay.

And other appointment.

Yep.

Just to get an appointment.

Yeah, just to get an appointment.

In some urban areas, as low as six to nine days.

In the rural areas, it's higher than you might expect.

Okay.

It's like more than 14 days oftentimes.

All right, so guess what?

These common infections that I'm talking about, do you predict you're going to get those, do you know, ahead of time?

I'm going to schedule that appointment in two weeks so that when I get Sick.

I've got it.

So everybody runs to the urgent urgent care office.

Yes.

So why not save the consumer the hassle of money by giving.

Giving them a free symptom checker system.

Yeah.

That allows them to have no cost, find out if they need treatment and if they have.

If they have a common problem that's easily treatable.

Right.

Well, that does seem like the magic.

You have these two outputs that are really valuable.

A prescription for something simple that you need and a doctor's note.

Yep.

And every health system in the world, but especially in the US need this because they all deal with access issues.

So this triage system and the magic of scaling up the doctor to do things asynchronously.

Powerful idea.

I'm telling you, Marty, it is a powerful idea.

And you know, I.

Before I dig too deep into the weeds on this specific product, Chatrx, what.

What is the bigger picture looking like to you right now?

I mean, you're a year into this.

You're seeing AI transform medicine.

I'm sure.

So as an entrepreneur, I'll tell you, I'll put my entrepreneur hat here on.

I think the life of our business, it could be variable, but I anticipate a merger, acquisition of us by somebody bigger than us, probably in three years or so.

I don't know.

Could be two years, three years, four years.

Yeah.

I could do this for a long time.

I love it.

Okay.

And so.

And then when it comes, when you think about mergers, acquisitions and all that sort of business, I mean, who.

Like part of it could be I sell the company and my shares to somebody, but I stay on board in the doctor chair.

Sure.

And so I have this orchestrated and built in a way that I can play different roles, founder, owner, or I can play the medical role, chief medical officer in that business, or just be an independent contractor, medical provider, sitting in.

That chair, providing a doctor chair, doing it.

I can do all of those things.

So you see this coming because you're seeing the industry changing, I'm assuming 100%.

What changes are you seeing?

Yeah.

Such that you think that Chatterx could be ended up the big merger or.

Acquisition in a couple years.

There's a couple big system things that are going on.

Access to care, I said, is a huge problem.

Every medical clinic, not only consumers, but medical providers, you know, institutionally, corporately, have a what do we do and how do we manage that?

How we recruit and retrain doctors and nurse practitioners and PAs.

So the answer in the system is go hire PAs and NPS.

That's what you're seeing the average consumer listening this.

Oh yeah, I've seen an np, I've seen a PA like that.

I can see that they're coming on.

They're cheaper labor, they can do some of this work.

Right.

But guess what?

AI solutions are also part of that ribbon.

Okay.

And so our, our company's positioning itself in the medical space to be one of the AI solutions to provider care.

Providers of care in that space.

So that's one number two, healthcare costs you mentioned are accelerating and growing.

Our GDP, it's nearing 20% of our GDP.

And the, and the, and the data doesn't show it's going to go down.

The data shows it's only going to go up.

And so if we can take a product that allows in the system for the experience of getting a bronchitis treated on a claim side of an insurance company, it costs them 150 bucks.

Okay.

For a consumer to go in, see the doctor, go get their prescription.

The whole throughput is actually 150 to 180 bucks.

Okay.

Okay.

So to get the care you need.

To treat the symptoms just for that.

Common condition, leave that in your brain and then take our product and go.

Okay.

Going to cost $20 plus the $4amoxicillin prescription at the pharmacy.

So you went from 150 to 180 bucks now to $24.

Having the same condition treated, not only is that convenient for consumers, not only does it cost them money, I mean cost them less money, make it more affordable, but the people who are used to paying for it, the system, the corporations, the insurance, they're also going to see that number come down dramatically.

So are we contributing to increasing the cost of healthcare?

No, no, no.

We're creating a solution that actually lowers the cost of healthcare.

Okay, well.

And I imagine for a lot of clinics it would be an advantage to keep those easy patients out of the office so that you could focus on.

More complicated patients that you need more time to take care of.

Right, Exactly.

So after doctors, just to tell you, not every doctor embraces this as a, like, oh, this is wonderful.

Some of them will see it as competition, right?

Yeah.

And some of them I'm thinking about.

The insurance companies may not like this either.

So this is how again, a doctor, a primary care doctor, I've done this long enough.

I know.

I've trained family doctors all of my career, all the time.

I mean, I've done this.

They're going to see a pa, an NP and an AI as competition and they're going to see it as competition for their easy visit.

So if I stack you with 30 hard visits a day and they're all hard, you're going to go, golly, that leads to burnout.

Give me a few earaches and a few UTIs, I'm done.

Okay.

Like, they need those sort of spring 10 sprinkled in there for their just, you know, health well being.

All right.

And so, and so they get a little bit perturbed and they're like, well, of course they can't get in to see me because I'm so busy with all these crazy, you know, hard patients.

Right?

Yeah.

So then the NPS and PAS in the office, they get to see the UTIs and the bronchitis and they're like, easy peasy.

This is for them.

I'm over here working like a dog.

And that NPR PA who's the access valve.

Yeah.

Is, you know, they get a little like, this isn't great because I'm working harder and they're not working as hard.

This is human nature.

This is how it works.

Okay?

You can see it.

And so now you take an AI product.

So to make this work for the doctor, to make this really work for the doctor, here's what we have to do.

We have to do a profit sharing component with it.

Okay?

So in other words, if I say to the doctor, add in Chatrx to triage out and treat these common infections so they don't even get into your clinic, and we'll share a little bit of that profit, then they're gonna go.

Oh, then they're incentivized.

Now I have some incentive for that.

Almost like an affiliate relationship.

Right.

You think about in a simple marketing way.

But if we share that together, they win, we win, everybody wins.

Patient, doctor and Chatrx, there's ways to do this.

And it takes somebody who's been where I have been for 30 years to know and understand all of those nuances.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

How has.

So you're.

You've been a rural physician for 30 years.

Yes.

Do you think that that experience taught you something that maybe being part of a bigger healthcare system wouldn't have, that has helped you understand the needs and made this a better product?

So I would back up a little bit and say, number one, I grew up Bremen in Marshall County.

Small town, guy first to go to college in the family, blew up in a blue collar factory working family.

I've always viewed medicine through those eyes.

And real people, regular people who work hard every day and they need Access to care and they need somebody to love on them and take care of them with quality care.

So I run a clinic.

I don't care whether it's rural.

If I would have been in South Bend, I'd ran it the same way through those eyes.

Okay.

And so when I created this product, I created it still through those eyes of that.

Yes.

Rural people have it harder.

You know, we look at people in South Bend bushwalk and say, you've got plenty of doctors around here.

As an example, I gave my system that I had worked for in my clinic two years notice, hey, go find a doctor, replace me.

Oh, that you were going to retire.

I'm going to retire, go find a doctor, replace me.

Here we are now, three years later.

Have they found a doctor, replace me?

No, they haven't because they can't.

Recruitment and retention of doctors in rural areas is a huge problem.

Growing gap, huge issue.

It's not because they didn't try to replace me, it's because they couldn't identify people that want to come to rural areas.

Right.

You have to convince a doctor the gap is growing.

And so my heart and burden are for the disadvantaged.

And I consider rural people, some of the disadvantaged in our country that can't get timely access to care when they need it.

And so again that's the part of the inspiration for me.

Friends and family network, I can help you.

I've got the knowledge I can create the right system and make myself and our care for you accessible to the average person.

Okay.

I'm aware that, yeah, rural healthcare systems are struggling.

Right.

The recruitment, the retention of quality, closing all over the country, small rural hospitals, access to care, becoming anxious, you keep the doors open.

Yep.

It's a sad state.

Is this going to help or hurt though?

I mean this is going to help.

From a healthcare system perspective.

Like if you're a small rural hospital.

If this is small.

If I'm a small rural hospital, this is going to help because I'm not going to clog up your ER and urgent care environments with simple things.

Yeah, it's a truly off putting of things that are simply and easily treatable that are not going to clog those systems.

Do you imagine running a rural clinic more efficiently with fewer staff?

Oh, definitely.

You could do now you could do that to some extent.

But you know, medicine is so regulated and corporatized and there's a lot of things associated with the chronic disease management and wellness and all that sort of stuff.

This is just a small piece of it.

So it's not going to dramatically move that bar of all the stuff we just talked about.

Gotcha.

It's still a lot of work.

You're not going to probably reduce your stat, but what you're going to do is you're going to help take care of patients who are trying to get in to see you when they call and say it's going to be 14 days when you have your UTI.

Right, right, right.

I mean, that is kind of crazy, right?

Stupid.

What happens if it's a child?

So we take care of pediatric patients.

So again, so like if a mom.

Is writing, hey, my five year old is running a fever and has a runny nose.

Great question.

So again, I've done family medic for so long that and I deliver babies, take care of moms and families.

I think of the whole spectrum of the family.

We created this product so that the primary user.

Okay.

Log.

It creates an account, our system as a user, but we allow for the addition of dependents.

And we have two types of dependents in our system.

Minors, those 18 and under and adult dependents.

So a great example we see all the time in medicine is I'm taking care of my mom who is housebound, who can't get into the clinic very easily.

And certainly when I try and get her in for that infection, it's a huge event.

It's frequent UTIs.

Yeah.

It's just.

And so we've created our system to account for.

That's great.

People being added in that way.

And then so you can get on the system as the user, do the symptom checker on behalf of the dependent.

Okay.

And voila.

Your 4 year old gets treated for their ear infection.

Yeah.

At 3:00am so.

Yeah.

Which I'm sure many, many parents are grateful for.

Yes.

Yeah.

So obviously you understand the medical profession, you understand negotiating insurance companies, but that's.

Not even a part of this.

Right.

It's not even part of this.

I'm leading to a question here.

What, what surprised you or what new learnings did you have to absorb to get this thing FDA approved?

Okay.

That's.

As a, as a piece of technology.

That'S been a big learning curve as well.

So let me just back up and say I went to pharmacy school before medical school.

Okay.

So I have some awareness of the FDA and drugs and medicines and all that business.

But the FDA is very interesting nuance to this.

There's, you had to learn that there's three different types of FDA approved medical devices.

Okay.

And we're, we're approved for the 1,1 level.

Level 1 device and not the level 2 and 3 which require a lot more of pre market data.

Okay.

So it's a level one.

We didn't require pre market data to be loaded up to them to get approved number.

Is there greater access with level 1.

Level 2, level 3 or it's more easily.

More easily approvable.

Okay.

All right.

Okay.

Now back up a second and say the FDA has been overwhelmed with AI driven medical devices and so it's.

We got in early.

Okay.

Okay.

And that was to our advantage.

Yeah, I'm sure.

And so now they're just overwhelmed by it.

It's hard for them to even manage and figure out.

And there's a whole system going on with this.

Number two, what I've note this is part of my family doctor wisdom.

Family doctors know what they know and know what they don't know and what they don't know.

They ask for help from people, I. E. Specialists to help them.

FDA approval.

Do I know that?

Shoot.

No.

So what did I do?

I went and hired a law firm.

I found an expert.

Yeah.

Who does this on AI technology alone and had them work with me to submit the application.

Got it.

And so is there sort of a black box magic to that?

A little bit, I would say yeah.

But that's because they have the experience to know how to answer the questions in the application the right way.

Well.

And it allows you to spend your time where you're the expert.

Yep.

So I mean there was a lot of things I'd explained to them so they could put it in the application and there's a lot of blah, blah, blah, blah.

But at the end of the day I outsource that to somebody who is an expert.

Yeah.

You mentioned the FDA being overwhelmed right now.

And I do feel like every time you read the news, there's another idea for an AI powered product that's going to solve problem X. Yep.

What's the competition look like right now?

So when it comes to this particular product for us, let me just say what we're doing is a full stack asynchronous telehealth experience to treat these infections.

We are one of a kind of.

There is none other on the marketplace right now.

Okay.

Now, telemedicine businesses that are providing asynchronous care that is in the marketplace, their big companies.

Think of Amazon One Health as an example.

Okay.

And other bigger players that are doing asynchronous telehealth medical care.

But the, the trick to those products are you still need an appointment with a medical doctor, PA or an np.

Okay.

It's appointment based.

So even if it's asynchronous, meaning what?

What they do is they, they ask you your symptoms, you fill up sort of a questionnaire, ask you some symptoms.

Some of them are AI based, some of them there are the old style of, you know, point and clicking.

Right, okay, right, right.

But essentially they assemble the diagnosis on a platter for the PA and peer doctor.

Okay.

Who when they have time, review it to it, review it and we'll answer them and say, could be in the best case scenario, six hours, in a worst case scenario, 24 to 36 hours later.

But you're left waiting for that appointment based upon that asynchronous data you've given to us.

Because of the power of technology, we have totally flattened that so that it feels like you're talking to me in real time.

You're getting your answer in real time and you're getting your treatment within five minutes.

Totally asynchronous.

Okay.

Now for those who are skeptics out there, you're going to say, wait a second, is AI doing all of this for you?

Are we talking about an AI doctor?

Which by the way, is a whole thing that's a debate out there right now is.

Oh yeah, yeah.

Because you can, you know, the technology is evolving to.

The point is, will there ever be a point where there's AI doctors who are licensed by states to do some of this sort of low hanging fro work and that are non human.

Right.

Okay.

Like avatars, your world.

But it's maybe five to ten years from now.

Yeah.

And so, but that's not what's happening.

What's happening here is much like I described, my AI is sort of loading it onto a plate for me.

Yeah.

My system is automated to interpret that plate and then automate the system that I still have to sign off on.

I still have to review the chart, sign off, say it was okay, say it was legit.

And that happens.

Yeah.

So for every single case you do, there is a step there where you.

Have to review it from a medical record standpoint.

I review it and I sign off on it.

Okay.

Okay.

But at that point it's already, it's.

Already done like the consumer's already picked their amoxicillin up at the pharmacy.

But I've had to review it because it's my license, it's my liability, so to speak, and my responsibility to do that.

So we haven't created an AI device that does.

Is Acting like an AI doctor.

We've created an AI device that loads it up for me to make the decisions.

It up to the point where it's literally just.

Yeah, it's an important nuance why It's a Class 1 device, not a Class 2 or 3 device on the FDA topic.

That's why it's that way.

Here's what I'm looking forward to is the Star Trek future where once a year I just lay down on a table, I get a whole full body scan.

I forget the name of that little device they had in Star Trek, but that was a thing.

These are some things we see or don't see.

You're good to go.

I would say this is the prototype version of that to some extent.

Okay, but, and, and we're going to be able to build on this and grow and there'll be other companies that take the same idea and move it forward and just iterate on it.

But we're choosing a low risk, low hanging fruit, easy space for us to take advantage of what technology exists now and really eventually help the consumer.

Yeah.

Well certainly I'm seeing a lot of wisdom in your choice to narrow it down to these 39 common diseases or.

Conditions.

Conditions.

Thank you.

Diseases.

Diagnosis.

Diagnosis.

Right.

Which is great because a lot of times you talk to entrepreneurs and they, they're thinking too broadly at the beginning instead of really focusing on a segment of the market.

Yeah, that focus is very important.

That needs to be care and attention.

Is critical for us in terms of our success is to stay focused in that way in a narrow space and then again have it answer marketplace.

Be a solution to marketplace problems.

Right, right.

And connect those dots to it.

And that's the choice that we're making Now I will say my marketing chief marketing officer be really mad at me if I don't go ChatRx MD.

ChatRx MD is our website.

That's the website.

And so if you're, if you're wondering what are all those 39 conditions, go to the website and we've got it right at the top banner what conditions are treated.

We have them all listed there and hey, give it a whirl.

And this is active right now.

It's active right now.

We're in what we call our public preview state which for a SaaS company just means that we're making it exposed to the public so they can give us the feedback to improve it.

We recognize it's not exactly right and so we're getting that feedback and getting that improvement from them and after we get that, within about three months, two to three months, our goal is then to take it to the broader market and then expand it nationally.

Okay.

Is part of what's next for you a higher level of FDA approval or you're good at the level?

We're good right where we are.

You can do what you need to do.

We can do everything we need to do.

Expand into Michigan, Illinois.

What's next is our go to market strategy and the scaling up and growth.

Okay.

So right now I have about 10.

This is the entrepreneur hat I'm putting it on.

We have 10 to 12 employees that are working every day on our product.

But to scale up, we envision literally millions of people using our product every day.

That's the vision.

Okay.

And so it's going to require about a beefed up team and a beefed up employee count to make that all happen.

Are your customers individual consumers?

Yes, they are.

Or are your customers potential enterprise?

Yeah.

So great question.

So as a CEO of the company, right now my job is to.

We're focused on the direct to consumer.

But I'm also, I've already got, I'm bridging relationships in the B2B world to develop the enterprise.

We call them pilot projects.

So we're identifying some partners in the B2B world that we can pilot some things, create some data, have some proof of case study with them, and then move that forward.

So all that kind of happens simultaneously.

But the direct consumer now, on day one, that's our core, right?

You want to talk to me, talk.

To me in a year.

Yeah, it probably is not going to be our core.

Yeah.

Still a very important part of the company, that it won't be our core in terms of what's bringing revenue into the company.

I wondered a little bit even if like maybe one of your customers are retired doctors who want to continue providing care.

That's so funny you asked that.

I already had one of those doctors reach out to you and say, hey, I hear you doing this.

It looks great idea.

Can I help?

Yeah.

And the answer I said is, thank you for asking.

I'll keep that in mind.

But the answer is I don't need your help right now because, Marty, I'm.

I can do all of this scaled up in the system because of how we've created it.

Now.

I, I realize I'll have some other.

I need a vacation once in a while.

Okay.

So I'll have, I'll have some other doctors involved in this with me and, and so forth.

But the initial version Is it's really on me, caring because I can.

Right, okay.

Right.

So pretty, pretty exciting stuff as we grow now, you know, I'm.

I told you, when family doctors know what they know and know what they don't know.

Right.

And so one of the things I recognize, I'm the founder, CEO, cmo, product manager, all, you know, wearing a thousand hats.

Right.

A lot of hats.

Our first step to really accomplish the go to market strategy and partnerships and growth that we see is we're already.

We're sourcing a new CEO right now to replace me.

Okay.

Because I recognize I have a bit of a sense ceiling as a inexperienced sort of, you know, SaaS tech person when it comes to this.

I know my.

I know our space medically, but you bring right team members on who can take the company to the right direction.

That's entrepreneurship as well.

Yeah, it is critical.

And so I have a ceiling.

I want to bring somebody in that has a much higher ceiling than mine and it's going to help our company grow.

So again, you talk to me in a year, you'll find there's probably another.

CEO want to talk to you in a year because this is really exciting.

So.

So you just started this a year ago.

I started the journey.

I started the journey of the company February of 2024 and 2024.

2024.

And when I say started the journey on the airplane back from Maui with my wife, dreaming with her about this, she gave me the thumbs up with, you know what, Todd, you've been talking about this for a decade.

You're going to retire soon.

I'm saying yes.

And the reason it required her sort of CFO approval is because it's my money that I put in to build this company.

This is not building other people's money at this point.

Well, right.

I was asked about that because, you know, you.

I did.

I guess I sort of assumed that you were probably sort of self financing to some degree at this point.

But obviously as you scale self financing, it, bootstrapping, it becomes harder and harder.

You can't, you can't do that.

It really, again, creates a ceiling in the process.

So again, that's part of bringing a CEO on, part of their natural relationships for fundraising and other things that go on.

And we're going to break the ceiling that currently exists if we really want this to grow.

And Marty, the heart of this for growth for me is not making a gazillion dollar business.

The heart of growth for me is getting what I know is a great product to as many people in this country as I can.

I am sure your consumers, your customers are going to appreciate that.

I mean, I've been the parent there with the sick kid on a Sunday afternoon who I can't get into a clinic.

And then you go to the urgent care and you wait for three hours in the waiting room with other sick people.

So true.

Crying child, right?

Like, yeah, it's a terrible experience.

It is a terrible experience.

And the challenge of that is, in your particular case, if you had a kid that had an earache as an example, you're like, I know my kids got an earache.

They need an antibiotic.

This isn't rocket science.

Right.

So why did I have to go through this expensive, long, long suffering process?

Right?

When.

When you think about the dock in your pocket, that's what we call Cheddar X.

The doc in your pocket could have solved that problem for you in five minutes for 20 bucks.

You're going to go sign me up.

Oh, 100%.

100%.

Not.

Not to mention, you know, you're sitting in a waiting room with other coffee sick people.

I'm thinking, geez, now I'm going to get another virus in my house.

You're talking because I spent three hours.

In a waiting room so much.

You're so exactly right.

And that's what real people understand, that they know that because guess what?

The doctors don't sit in the waiting room.

No, they're back in the clinic.

They're back in the back seeing people when they get put in the exam rooms.

They don't want.

They don't know what it's like to sit there in that waiting room for three hours with all those sick people wondering when it's going to be my turn.

And you got a kid that's crying, wanting you to help them, and you're like, I'm sorry, buddy.

It's going to be okay.

We're going to get you through this.

Okay?

Like, that's painful.

And I have a heart for that and a passion for helping that person.

Yeah, that's great.

Well, listen, thank you so much for being on the show.

This was.

I mean, great conversation.

I'm excited about what you're doing.

I'm excited about all the people that you're going to be able to help with this product.

And good for you for saying, I'm going to retire and do this whole new thing.

Yeah, yeah.

Pushing the frontiers of medicine forward.

Really?

Yeah.

Marty, I want to thank you for having me on the show.

Okay.

And give me this forum to be able to share my experience and to tell a little bit about ChatterX MD.

That's the website you go to.

Okay.

But again, it's very special for me to be here.

I have Northern Indiana roots.

I don't need to go to San Francisco.

I don't need to go to New York.

I can be right here in Marshall County, Indiana, and do this virtual business, a virtual company that can help change the world for the good and truly be a force for good.

And guess what?

Any of your listeners out there who are in this region, you can join.

Not my venture, but even create your own venture and do it right here at home and be homegrown.

There you go.

Okay.

Dr. Silson, thank you.

You're welcome.