In this episode of The Evolution of Medicine, host James Maskell interviews Dr. Ryan Arnold, founder of Clava Health and a former emergency and critical care physician who transitioned into functional medicine.
The conversation explores Dr. Arnold’s journey from hospital-based medicine to building a scalable functional medicine clinic focused on root-cause care, longevity, and brain health. He shares how frustration with traditional disease-focused medicine pushed him to pursue functional medicine training and eventually launch a cash-based practice.
Dr. Arnold explains why brain health is emerging as the central pillar of longevity medicine and how cognitive decline can often be reversed through comprehensive functional medicine protocols that address metabolism, sleep, inflammation, and lifestyle factors.
The episode also dives into the importance of program-based care models, multidisciplinary teams, practitioner collaboration, and how new technologies like relational AI can help clinics scale patient education and engagement.
About the Guest:
Dr. Ryan Arnold, MD is the founder of Clava Health, a functional medicine clinic focused on longevity, metabolic health, and cognitive optimization. Originally trained in emergency and critical care medicine, Dr. Arnold transitioned to functional medicine after recognizing the limitations of traditional disease management.
He now leads a program-based practice that integrates personalized medicine, lifestyle interventions, multidisciplinary care teams, and emerging technologies to help patients prevent and reverse chronic disease—particularly cognitive decline.
Website: https://clavahealth.com/about-us
Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/ryanarnoldmd
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ryan.arnold.925/
James Maskell is a healthcare entrepreneur and founder of The Evolution of Medicine. For over 20 years, he has worked to scale functional medicine through community-driven models, group visits, and practitioner infrastructure. His work focuses on moving medicine upstream—toward prevention, lifestyle intervention, and systems-based care.
Website: https://www.jamesmaskell.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mrjamesmaskell
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jamesedwardmaskell/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesmaskell
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Transcript:
Understanding, how do we get to the cause of this problem and not just focus on the problem itself and say, Let’s prevent that. And that was a natural expansion for what we’re doing, because at the end of the day, what I tell a lot of our patients is, what you experience every day is physical health and mental health, cognitive health, right? That’s all that we really experience. Everything you’re doing to make that better are strategies and techniques for that, but the goal is to be physically capable functional and have your mind about you and with you.
Hello and welcome to a very special episode of the evolution of medicine podcast. I am live in San Francisco. I’ve got Dr Ryan Arnold here we are about to get into the relaunch of the functional forum is starting in like an hour. But Doc, thanks so much for making all the way up to San Francisco. Really glad to have you here. Dr Arnold is the owner of Klava health. We’re going to be talking a little bit about that. Go and check out the website.
I think it might be the coolest website that I’ve seen in functional medicine. But Doc, speaking tonight at the functional forum, living the dream. Absolutely. Thanks for having me such an honor to be here. I’m excited to get started, also to relaunch the functional Forum, which I participated in remotely, but now I get to be here in person. It’s just, it’s such an exciting time.
So, so give us the story. You know, everyone in functional medicine has such a unique story about how they got started and where the practice came from, and tell us a little bit about where the passion came from, and then how you got set up into global health. Sure, for me, the journey was like many of our colleagues. I think I was seeing the the absence of of true health creation in medicine. I was a critical care emergency medicine, kind of trained, focused physician.
Found myself really getting into fitness and health and wellness and realizing that my own colleagues in medicine couldn’t guide me in that space. And so when covid happened, it was the straw that kind of broke the proverbial back where I realized that we were seeing the dysfunction manifesting now in failure. And to me, that was it was pushing me, and I’d already begun my training with IFM helped me figure out that, like this was the time to put all my eggs into that basket and say, I can no longer practice something that is not aligned with what I believe.
So this opportunity was for me. Finished my training and took the took the jump into a practice that was full time, left, left the hospital medicine, left emergency medicine, and really focused on building and scaling functional medicine, you know, on on a larger level, and not just an anecdotal here and there’s scale. So it was really a big jump for me. Tell me about the early days. What are you doing? How’s it going? What’s it like to do this rather than being in an emergency situation?
It’s been, it’s it’s been, you know, kind of reinvigorated my belief in medicine and the human aspect that I was, that I was it was burning me out. I think many of us that were all burnt out scene where we were failing people. And I think that all the challenges of running a business that you weren’t prepared for, they weren’t we weren’t educated about in medical school, where were countered with feeling that I was doing better medicine, and I felt like I was watching individuals that were actually healing.
So in the beginning, you know, as terrifying as it was, I was, I was leaning in with people and spending 3040, 50 minutes each visit, and that’s I’ve just never had that opportunity. So all of a sudden, I was getting to know people on ways that were not only deeper than I’ve ever had, but then recurrent basis. And so I would see real healing happen. We would see disease reversal, which we were told we couldn’t even talk about.
And I think we you and I even talked about the one point you’re not allowed to say, I reverse diabetes, but we can reverse diabetes. Like, yeah, we can see those moments. So I think those were encouraging, you know, kind of signals to me that we were going in the right direction. Awesome. So I guess I’d love to, like, understand the club, a health journey, where it came from, where you were at the beginning, and what inspired you to get into entrepreneurship.
Because it’s one thing to do the medicine. It’s another thing to like be the business owner, right? Yeah. And honestly, I have many colleagues that are doing a similar transition from hospital medicine or traditional medicine to functional and everyone has different approaches. For me, the approach came as an opportunity of a colleague that was retiring.
So as opposed to, you know, slowly building my practice and inching out of the of the clinical medicine with the, you know, insurance based care, I literally went from, you know, full time one day to taking over the practice of my colleague and having a just, you know, 1500 person you know, program that I was five days a week, seeing people every day with a parallel line they had. We were doing IV services during covid, especially so the covid support with IV vitamin C, and these vitamin therapies that we’re helping individuals cure and heal faster, something we weren’t even offering in the hospital.
And, you know, and my background, I came from a place where we were, we were doing some, you know, trials of IV vitamin C and sepsis patients in the ICU, and so that was, these were, you know, studies that had funding and had support, but they were very small and and, and I saw that now, I saw that now I was able to do that at scale on some. On earlier and preventing. It was, it was an amazing experience.
And I realized that this was, this was something that I was enjoying. But on the business side of it, it was terrifying. It was just, it was terrifying. I was I was realizing how much I did not know. You get in there and all of a sudden you have a staff, you got to pay rent and insurance and things, and I was just,
I was unaware what I don’t even know, how much it didn’t know.
And I think for me, part of that that transition was the humbleness of realizing that I had to learn the new language, and that language was the language of business, and particularly, you know, a cash based practice in which we were not not paying, you know, playing that insurance game. We’re paying that playing that model. So we really had to provide a level of service for individuals that that brought them back to us, that they trusted us.
We had a lovely dinner with practitioners locally. How did that? How did that come about? I forget the story. So that was a friend of ours that just was like, you know that I was at that time, I was new to the world of functional forum. I was new to functional medicine training. I just started my training I just started my training at that point, kind of like doing my own, my own education, and friend, a friend of ours that kind of like was in the same circles, like, Oh well, I know Dr Burke and I know James Maskell. We’re having dinner tonight.
And I was just like, You’re what? So here I was, like an old fanboy, kind of excited to meet you and excited about the opportunity, just because I had been inspired by the messaging that I felt that in many physicians that I know, that have, you know, kind of heard your your talks had said, you know, they felt seen by, you know, by, though, like, by a group of people that understands what we what we do on the front line of medicine and the business side of it, right?
So for me, that opportunity, have we met that night, the opportunity was presented to me to to essentially go all in on the practice six months later. And that was, boom. I was like, this is just fortuitous. I have to, this is the world the universe wants me to do this. So this is, this is my next step. So, so that that was, you know, this, this kind of, like, planted the seed that told me that, like, this could be possible. And then fast forward, the practice is in place.
And you know, when you reached out recently about, you know, kind of our the relaunch of the true neuro program and that, and the and that, the cognitive decline program like that, was just another moment where I’m like, there’s just something about Mr. Maskell here, and I can’t ignore and so it’s been, it’s been a very, I think, just, you know, moment for me, realizing where our mentors need to be and where our guidance has to be.
And especially for those of us in medicine, we struggle with, honestly, having to understand what we don’t know about that side of the practice of medicine. And so it’s like, it’s, you know, you get your science down, and that’s fine, but that’s but that is only a piece of that puzzle, and how to market it, how to sell it, how to be successful in your practice, how to run your team. I mean, your team is now people you hire, not just people that you are working alongside with in a hospital that you have no power over.
So it’s a very different experience. I remember when we had that conversation that you had gone down the route that a lot of practitioners go, where you have one location, it goes really well, and it sort of looks like, well, I could just start this other location. For practitioners who haven’t maybe done that. What are the sort of risks and reward of that journey?
Well, I think that that’s, I mean, that was that conversation we had where, as you were asking, like, how things were going. And it was this moment of, like, light bulb awareness. Were you like, Let me guess, like, you have yourself in your second location, and you’re a single practitioner, and you’re feeling strapped, and you’re just going, I’m like, Oh my gosh. Like, how does he know? Like, has he been researching? Did you come into my clinic?
Like, it just I felt very seen, but also very exposed in a way that was, you know, vulnerable, and it helped me realize that I wasn’t even asking the right questions. And I think that, you know, it’s the questions of, you know, how do I scale me? How do I scale my idea? And that’s two different things.
And I think so when, when you started connecting me with those tools that help us scale, scale concepts and practices and our and our, you know, kind of opportunity, as opposed to what I was doing at the time, which was this, you know, traditional fee for service, you know, cash based practice that you come in, you spend your time, and that’s, and that’s about, you know, all you can expect and encounter. But it also, I think, encouraged me, and I saw that when someone commits to a plan, they commit to a package, commit to a membership like all of a sudden that person says, We’re in this together.
And now there’s this, this almost this bigger trust that’s that allows both the team, me, my team, and the patient and their family, to kind of understand that this is a different experience than they’ve ever had in medicine, right? And they’ve ever had their transactional experiences there once a year, check in with some, you know, rather basic, I won’t say useless, but near useless labs, and they kind of don’t get much out of that.
And so now we have this opportunity to, like, really change that expectation, change the, you know, the discussion, and even change for them the questions they can ask of that beautiful system. Yeah, I love that. Well, I think this might be a good time. Applying for a live ad read. Because ultimately, you know, what you’ve encountered in our relationship is a few of these things. So if you go to go Evo med.com/concierge, you can get on a call, and we can have that kind of conversation.
So many times the practitioners, they’re just, you know, they, like you said, they don’t know what they don’t know. And so you know, half an hour clarifying conversation can can get people moving in the right direction. So sign up for that. It’ll probably be me, but it might be, you know, one of the team there. But go Evo med.com/concierge, and thank you so much to our mission partners. The whole point of the mission partners are to build exactly the kind of practice that Dr Arnold is building.
We’re going to talk about that in a minute. You know, the mission partners like Truneura doctor, you’ve been a great addition to the Truneura mastermind. And what you’re going to be talking about tonight in the functional forum is like adding a brain niche to your practice. So if you want to find out how you can do that, go to goevomed.com/truneura with Fullscript, they’ve been our partners for 10 years.
Ultimately, we’re building, you know, helping clinics build the infrastructure to really scale, because the labs and the supplements and all that stuff is the most annoying, boring pieces of running a practice. And we got some cool stuff going on with them that we’ve done on how to build that infrastructure and how to do some prevention at scale. So go to goevomed.com/fullscript, freedom practice coaching.
You know, some, as you mentioned, so many of the issues that practitioners come across when they’re trying to get into functional medicine relate to hiring cells, like, what to sell, how to sell, it consistently, all of these things, rather, you know, just not things that doctors had to think about. So goevomed.com/fpc, and then finally, you know, you you saw Uli do his work yesterday in that Uli at bigboost.marketing.
I mean literally yesterday, we’re sitting in an hour call from Uli, and he’s literally showing how he’s taken a clinic in Sarasota, Florida, to become the dominant player in the delivery of cognitive decline in that town. What does that look like? It looks like setting up your practice to be able to be read by AI. We’ve got a great session that I can send you on that. But yesterday, he was really talking about how to use video to do not only pre education, but to bring really high level, low cost discovery calls into your clinic.
And like you said, like this is a missing skill that people aren’t taught about, but ultimately, if you do get yourself, you know he shared on the meeting yesterday this doctor in Sarasota how he’d had to hire another front desk person because there were so many calls coming through, they’re all ready to sign up. That’s because he’s nailed the pre education system by using Facebook ads and Facebook ads in a strategic way to only show ads to people you know what they’re ready for.
So you know, there’s all the ads, but like, you’re a perfect example of, like, why we do this. Because, you know, you’ve gone from being an emergency room medicine doctor to, I would, I would say, like, changing the lives of 1000s of people in your area across these two clinics. And you know, that’s the whole purpose. So why don’t we jump into the brain health stuff now that you you brought it up. So your positioning, I would say, is sort of like longevity. If I look at the site, that’s sort of like where you’re where you’re where your head’s at.
And I think that functional medicine really is longevity medicine, right? Let me ask you this. So why? Why did you feel that it was interesting and relevant to have a brain health program in that kind of practice. Well, I think that what you know, when you when I realized and saw, you know, the constructs and the foundation of the approach that the Bredesen protocol, the Recode protocol, a lot of these, you know, this, the brain health protocols that are out there that that they are really the foundation of functional medicine. It’s root cause assessments, right?
It’s, it’s understanding, how do we get to the cause of this problem and not just focus on the problem itself, and since they, you know, prevent that, and that was a natural expansion from what we’re doing. Because at the end of the day, what I tell all of our patients is, you know, what you experience every day is physical health and mental health, cognitive health, right? That’s all that we really experience. Everything you’re doing to make that better, our strategies and techniques for that.
But the goal is to be physically capable, functional, and have your mind about you and with you. And so those two things are our product of our of our like goals. We realize that at the end of the day, if our brains not with us, and we’re not, you know, we’re not feeling that the we’re able to, you know, operate and, you know, kind of interact with the world and the people we love in this world, then even our perfect, a perfect body wouldn’t matter, right?
So it kind of was this realization of that, how do I take this, this program that is something that you can’t just do, you know, casually, you have to kind of be all in. But how do you, how do you scale that? And I think that was, for me, this recognition about, not only the, you know, the ultimate longevity play is the brain, yeah, and for me, it’s that, it’s the how, you know, the and many people use this term, it’s not a coin term, but the health span, brain span, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s the quality of the life you live, not just the duration.
And so as. As we look at these things that are making your brain better, you’re also, by the way, making the making the rest of the body better and the functional better. It’s such a great point. I mean, I’ve written about this, but I haven’t, sort of said it in an interview, but the thing that could have reversed cognitive decline, it could have been a drug, it could have been a surgery, it could have been a peptide, you know all, and maybe it will be in the future, but right now, the thing that reverses cognitive decline is healing the body right, right, right?
And you know, what an amazing opportunity that we have then to under the guise of solving a problem that has yet to be solved, or has only been solved for the first time. Now, the side effects, like, if you look at the pre print for the recent Bredesen study that Dr Burke was a part of you see side effects include blood pressure improvement, heart improvement, all of these other improvements. And so it’s like the body heals.
And compare that to medication, where, okay, the side effects of that are, you might get a brain bleed, you know what I mean. So this is a pretty exciting moment. And I I’m glad that you see what I see, which is that longevity clinics need to be anchored in brain health, right? And I think it’s, it’s a natural expansion of what they’re already focused on. Is it doesn’t necessarily have to change the direction. It’s just, it’s adding a feather in their targeted capsules, because, and I think these individuals can do, you know, it’s all and I think the daunting aspect of it is that people are concerned about over promising.
They’re used to this space of being one of just, you know, kind of quiet acceptance of a bad diagnosis, and this is what medicine offers them. You know, we’ve heard the stories many times. Traditional Medicine says, Okay, here’s your diagnosis, here’s your outcome. You know, we’ll help you along the way the best we can with supportive medicines. We don’t plan for things to get better. And I think that that’s what you know when this trial, which I know is so in preprint, and everyone’s, you know, it’s, it’s in the peer review phasing right now.
But the excitement around the data is one that is showing that hasn’t been done before, which is reversal, not just like steadying the fall. I mean that that should be exciting every physician out there, when they read this and when you see and that and realize that it goes back to what we do in medicine, which is personalizing the, you know, the focus. It’s not one size fits all, and that’s the precision medicine side of that.
Of that aspect for me, I think the exciting thing is also the power of the team. And I, and I say this, you know, where it’s, it’s the realization that, like, it’s not this perfect relationship with a doctor who knows all and then, you know, and the patient just like, Oh, thank you for this, imparting your amazing knowledge on us. Yeah, it’s, it’s what they did in that study, and what they what we do, what Dr Bredesen has shown in practice, which is, you know, the accountability.
It’s, it’s like when we know that nutrition and sleep and regaining and maintaining muscle mass, that these things are predictors and maintainers of cognitive health, that doesn’t happen by me telling you to work out more and seeing you in six months. Yeah, it’s not gonna happen. I mean, how many patients still smoke because their doctor said don’t smoke? I mean, that’s we know. It’s not the good thing for us. It’s like, how do you help someone make small changes to make that goal?
And that’s where now partnering with what we brought into our practice, with which are these experts in their fields, in physical medicine and movement, medicine and training medicine or nutrition and coaching, or just the behavior change side of it. So now you have like, and I’ve had this conversation recently with a very exciting coach is coming onto our practice, and her and I were talking, and I said to her, like, you know, there’s this assumption that doctors and nurses, you know, great intended clinical folk, know how to coach an individual.
We’re not even taught how to coach in medical school, much less how to run a business. But coaching is its own entity, and these individuals that that come into you, whether it’s the family and the and the and the patient, you know, you have to make a lot of changes. Like these are not easy changes to make sleep hygiene and nutrition changes and a movement, you know, program that is much more, much more rigorous, but that comes through knowing how to life coach, somebody, yeah, and so it’s just, it’s just, it’s just realization that is, like, the tribe comes together.
I think of it like, I would call it the round table, right? Where, if I have a therapist and a physical therapist, you know, emotional therapist, psychologist, right? Plus a nutritionist, like, we all have different things that we see that patient in different lenses, and if we come together and have a conversation now, that patient gets to benefit from this collective that sees them in different ways and helps them and then, but here’s the key, is that they hear from us a consensus message.
They’re not hearing this person say, oh, that ketogenic diet is bad for your cholesterol, and this doctor is saying, No, this is good for you. You should do it like Who do I choose? Yeah, they don’t need me put in the middle Exactly. So this is, this is, you know, and this, by the way, this came from the community, the community, and I just got to add my own little commercial here for but I just say the community that Truneura and Dr Burke, the US put together, has been so encouraging, you know, my that I now consider friends that are and, you know, other parts of the.
World of the country like that are that we’re collecting and talking and just sharing our own struggles, and how to launch our own program and how to tweak the minutia details and that community makes you feel so much less alone, because when you stand up by yourself against this system, and you have a lot of collective doctors around you that I roll on what you do, even if your outcomes are better, it doesn’t matter, you’ll still feel alone.
So you want that community that feels supported, and that’s what I’ve been so blessed and grateful for. What has you know I found through this program and has allowed me to now put together a package and an offering and a treatment plan that I that I couldn’t have done even thought of. Well, I’m really glad you shared about that, because it’s actually been one of the highlights of my career to bring practitioners together in a way that I can see in real time is meaningful.
And yeah, look the practice management stuff. We’ve done a lot of that over the years. We did the practice accelerator otherwise. But the thing that’s really got me going in the last month, particularly has been these case collaborations, because I feel like people come for brain health, but actually what you’re learning is, like, the intricacies of what to do with a patient with mole the intricacies of like how to deal with that, and you know metabolic inflammation, and you know how to deal with patients that aren’t doing what you tell them to do.
This is not in the training, no, right? This is the rubber hits the road of what do you do with real people? And I’d love to get your thoughts on that, because I’ve been around long enough to know that I’ve never heard this conversation before, and I know everyone is like showing up every week, because they know that Christine, with 20 years of experience, knows, you know, is in a position to really help them with the subtle skills that make or break whether or not this person’s going to be successful.
I mean, it’s, it really goes back to the apprenticeship model, which is what’s just how we, you know, as a society, used to hand down skills, and we’ve lost that thinking that you can just read it in a book, and that’s important. You know, didactic book knowledge is an important factor. But without the human side of medicine, it’s only theoretical.
And I think that those those exact visits, and I brought my own case to the team, that it was that we are going to be presenting, you know, kind of the next, the next step of that, of that interaction, because it’s been such a challenging case and and to have the experience of both colleagues that are hearing that, like, oh my gosh, I’ve had that same problem with my patient. They can, they can align that. But to your point, like the rubber meets the road, like, this is the this is the challenge of this patient’s challenge.
And so it’s not about you should be eating this way. It’s like, well, this patient lives in a home that can’t do that. What do you do now? I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s really the the nuances of the the unique application of these, of these techniques to a individual thing, and then, so how do we coach them through that? And how do we make a program around that? So it’s not, you know, something that is, that is, that is too, you know, formidable to overcome it. So it is, it is wonderful.
And I’ve, I’ve been so inspired by that, because it makes you it brings us back to those you know, if you look back when medicine Grand Rounds happen. It’s because they always come back to difficult cases, and they never, it’s never like we figured it out. Everything’s perfect. It’s never that way. There’s always these, you know, the human side of medicine that changes things. And so it’s, it is it again? The community is something that that, you know, we go through training and residency and we have this community, right?
And you’re learning together. You’re soaking up knowledge together, and it’s great. Then you go off on your own, but you realize that, unless you stay connected to some sort of similar community, that when you work, even in medical systems, you work in parallel with your colleagues. You’re not sharing cases, you’re not discussing stuff. And so then you get lost, and then you’re like, now you just almost feel like you’re working by yourself, even if someone’s sitting right next to you, doing their own work.
Now we sit, we protect time, you know, and I bring my staff now to start wanting to listen to these cases, and because they’re now a part of that care team, and so they’re like, Oh, this is for doctors. Like, No, it’s for the team, yeah. And that’s a different and different experience. Well, can you see the vision now that you’re in it? Which I came to is that, like, let’s say there’s a third place that you want to have, where you want to bring on a new nurse practitioner, there’s a place where they can go, where they will feel that sort of support, because you transferring your information to them is unlikely.
Because you’re working in parallel. You’re not having that right? It’s assumed that that would happen, but it doesn’t happen, and I think that’s why 85% of functional medicine clinics are one practitioner, because that the transfer of one practitioner’s knowledge and insight to someone else is, you know, doesn’t happen all right. So, you know, I just want to share. So tell us you’ve got this the program’s called Mind span. Yes, it’s on your website.
I’m going to make an endorsement right now for clabahealth.com I actually think it’s the coolest Functional Medicine website I’ve seen. I want to talk some about the technology, but let’s first of all talk about your program, how you came up with it. Yeah, so, I mean, I want to attribute a lot of the program support around Turner, and what you guys have helped me do and understand and and understanding that, like the that in a in a brain, you know, directed program.
It’s, it’s very easy. Easy to try to offer a one off test. Oh, I want to know this test for my brain. What do I do over here? Or what does this blood test show? Versus putting together a program that says we are going to give you all the information that you need to have access to and then help you understand what the road head looks like. So we kind of put ours together in phases.
There’s a 90 day, three month phase one, where it really is our data gathering collection phase, where we kind of give the patient the entire experience of understanding what the root causes that are contributing to the sin, you know, to the condition are, how severe this, you know, their their condition is, if it’s just prevention, or are we in early stages, but then it’s, then it’s the full one year program after that, once they understand, okay, I know what I need to work on, and we’re going to walk you through it.
And then that’s the next commitment stage, so that that one year program allows us to then put in place all of the treatments that are now unique to what we found in that first phase, like if you need hormone optimization, we can do that. But if that’s something you need, then we’re not going to one size fits all it. We’re going to, you know, there’s no value in increasing your hormone levels if they’ve already been optimized.
So that’s part of this program as a phased in, but personalized approach that that really gives you a comprehensive look and turns over all the leaves at once, and doesn’t allow things to be, well, let’s check that one only if this is abnormal, right? We want to optimize all that, and then that’s allowed us to put have, have the patients and the families involved know what to expect. Yeah, this is the they’re in for for 90 days, and then they’re then they’re in for a year after that, and then they make those, those those step wise decisions, along those journeys.
I love that, because what you’re really doing is replicating what we know works because of the randomized control trial, right? That was the first time. How do you design a randomized, controlled trial where personalized medicine can be delivered? Well, you do some setup to see what’s going on, and then you work out, okay, what does this person need? And now you get to execute that, and you have a system that that you know that shows that not easy to do in an RCT, but actually what we know works. So just replicating that, I think that’s really cool.
I do want to ask you about your website, because I saw it this week. So it says, powered by Ally one, Ally one, Ally one. Yeah. So tell us about ally one from and and if you want to go to club, a health comm and play around with it, you’ll see, see what it looks like. So this was, this is something we’ve been working with the last year and a half of collaboration with a company in which something we something that’s called relational AI. And so this is not just another chat bot on a screen.
It’s something that sits in an infrastructure that is educated by stuff that I tell it to be educated by, right? So I limit its, its its knowledge and scope around what I want the person who interacts with the website to see. And so if you go there right now, you you can ask it about our programs, and it can talk to you about what you want to know. And so that what’s, what’s nice about this is you are literally talking to this AI agent that is in my voice, which is weird at first, but then, you know, you kind of get used to it, but it, it kind of relates our programs that are in there and tell and answers the questions that are kind of like,
well, how’s this work, and what’s involved, and what’s commitment? And I don’t do you guys do this, so now you can get a lot of questions answered without going to an FAQ page that you’re not, that you may not read all, all of it, yeah, but it also personalizes what you want to hear. You get to you get to ask it what matters to you and your health journey and your family, and see if it’s the right fit.
So for me, it’s it scales, kind of the questions a lot of times my staff, and when you think about synchronous interactions, and they have to be on the phone and answer a question like it allows many people to kind of discover, is this place the right fit for me? Because we want fit. We don’t want we’re not one size fits all. We don’t, we don’t match for some people, and if they’re, hey, I’m going to be using only my insurance model, it’s like, well, this might not be the right fit for your goals.
Yeah. And so we let people figure that out, but it can guide them through that. But the exciting thing, and this is what I can’t show on the website, but we’ll, we’ll have some inter examples that we can later on, as we’ve kind of gotten this worked out, but the ally, one team is a very exciting team that is building these interactions that are also allowing me to go behind the firewall. So now, imagine you’re my private patient in our brain health program.
Well, I did interact with the website, so I’m in the system, yes, well, but now, now let’s say you’re a patient, and then now you sign in, and you get, now you’re in your medical record. So how many times and you’ve been in your medical record, and they’re like, what was my last sodium level? And my doctor said my potassium was too low, and I think that my a 1c was high for my blood sugar. And then imagine a informed, HIPAA, compliant, you know, but, but perfectly in, you know, an interactive agent that can interact with you and say,
Oh, your surgery was on September 3, 2022 you had a left rotator, you know, repair, and then you had a complication with that, with the with the antibiotic course you went on. Remember the GI thing that happened? So all of a sudden, this thing is very involved with your medical record, but, but can now help you. Always have at the touch of your of your you know, of your phone or your computer, like, access to your records, just you know, that much faster, as though, as opposed to getting lost and having disparate systems, you now have a system like, you know, coupling something like true neuro which, which, you know, assimilates data from many different sources into one, one dashboard.
You educate that you add in this layer of insight and kind of like awareness. Now, this now is this beautiful new world of like someone being more informed that and asking questions that are better engaging and not just searching for data, right? Which a lot of times it’s like, you know is, are your is your hemoglobin trend safe, or is this chronic for you? And so now that’s like, it really changes and allows us to scale some of our reach, some of our teaching or education reaches.
So imagine I put a glucose monitor on you and and you, and you forget how to use it well, interacting with this thing that can have pre, pre designed education and that I’ve already put in there. And then, if you know, then if it prompts a question that can also be brought to our attention earlier. I mean, the leveraging this is exciting, because if you do it right, and patients are informed on how to expect that interaction to be meaningful and useful, but not replacing the physician, not replacing their coach, not replacing the team, it’s augation navigator.
Really. It’s a navigator, and it augments your education, augments what you what you can expect. Can expect. There all the successful clinics that I see out there have that patient navigator role, and typically, obviously it’s being a human but to have something in that clip that’s like helping the people answering the questions, I think it’s a really smart use of technology.
Look, Doc, I just want to say like, I want to acknowledge the journey that you’ve gone on. I acknowledge that you probably didn’t know how odd it was going to be when you started, but I feel like started, but I feel like you’re, you know, you’re some ways out of the woods, right? And then you have the right business model, right? You have your membership, you have all these patients that started, so you’ve got a lot of good things going on.
And, you know, isn’t it exciting now to just think, Okay, well, where do I want to take this next? What do my people need? How can I support them? How can I continue to grow as an entrepreneur? And you know where, you know where the the edges of this might be. And I just want to say, like, the goal at the beginning of the functional forum was to put characters on stage that were aspirational, where other doctors would see them and say, I want to do that.
And part of the reason why I chose you to be here tonight and speak to this group is because I see you as that. I see that someone who’s like, humble about, you know, their starting point, who is honest about the ups and downs of entrepreneurship, but ultimately has built something that I think 99% of functional medicine clinics will be like, clinicians will be like, I want to do that. What he’s built is what I want to do. So I just want to acknowledge the journey that you’ve been on.
I know it’s not the end of the journey. This is like the next step up. Yeah, I’m super excited to have you share your wisdom tonight. Have dinner with a group of practitioners in this space. What do you think of the spot? This is unbelievable. I mean, it’s such a what a perfect launch. The fact that we have a sauna here, that’s great. All right. Well, we’ll see you later in the sauna. Doc, thanks so much for being here. Thanks for being part of the relaunch of the functional forum.
Great to have you here. Check out Clava Health, clavahealth.com check out the website, interact with the bot, and you’ll see what I see that I think this is a really cool front end, digital front door to a practice. I think you’re showing the way. And thanks so much for being part of the true neuro mastermind. Come and join us at the true neuro mastermind. This is a place where practice practitioners are learning how the intricacies of how to reverse chronic disease.
And the cool thing about brain health is that you’ve got all the different niches and functional medicine in there. So this is the most complete, loving container that I’ve ever created, and I’m really grateful to have you in it. Awesome. Thanks so much. Thank you. Enjoy tonight. Crush it. Enjoy the dinner, and we’ll see you down in LA on the 13th of May. Excellent. Thank you. All right, there’s been the evolution of medicine podcast. I’m your host, James Maskell, and we’ll see you next time.
So that was the podcast. What an epic session. And just a reminder that coming up in April, we will have version two of our reversing Alzheimer’s Summit, and we’re gonna have updates on some of the new studies from Dr Bredesen and be charting a path forward for the reversal of Alzheimer’s and cognitive decline. Thank you so much for tuning in to the evolution of medicine podcast. We’ll be back again next week, and thanks so much for tuning in, and we’ll see you next time.
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