It’s no secret—what we eat plays a vital role in our long-term health, and a poor diet can increase our risk of chronic disease. There are countless food diary apps, but they seldom offer the level of personalization, simplicity, and cultural competency that gives users an accessible path to behavioral change.
Enter Diet ID–a digital health startup that promises to change the way people measure nutrition while equipping providers with the information they need to support better health outcomes. We spoke with Diet ID cofounder and chief operating officer Rachna Govani about how Diet ID works and what’s on the horizon for her business.
Company mission: To make diet a vital sign.
Questions and Answers
What is Diet ID and what was the impetus for creating it?
Diet quality is the single leading predictor of premature death and chronic disease risk but is almost never measured. Diet ID changes that—offering a breakthrough, unique-in-the-world, patented innovation that can conduct a comprehensive, effortless dietary assessment over any digital interface in as little as 60 seconds. Diet ID is to diet as the blood pressure cuff is to blood pressure and is poised to usher in the next great advance in the standards of clinical care.
Tell us more about the technology. How does it work?
Diet ID is a patented, evidence-based nutrition assessment and behavior change platform designed to measure and mitigate. Diet ID is relevant for entire populations; its pattern-recognition assessment and progressive behavior change modules are personalized based on an individual’s responses and meets them where they are in their nutritional journey. Diet ID is culturally relevant across many dietary patterns including Mexican, Caribbean, Southern American, Southern Asian, and more. For example, if someone is focused on improving their heart health, our technology can make food recommendations relevant to their specific culture or ethnicity that target that concern.
The application is also integrated with the largest platforms so if you’re a health system using Epic or an employer using Virgin Pulse, you can easily build Diet ID into your workflows.
Who are your customers?
Diet ID sells its solutions to healthcare providers, payers, employers, and researchers who have populations with dietary risk factors like high BMI, hypertension, and diabetes/prediabetes.
Diet ID can be utilized with people across all markets as well as with team members as a risk stratification tool, community health measurement tool, and scalable community-wide intervention.
How did you get connected to MedHealth? What has MedHealth done to help your business?
We were connected to MedHealth via the Michigan Economic Development Corporation and TechTown, which has been an incredible resource.
What’s next for Diet ID?
Diet ID recently completed an integration with Epic, so we are focused helping our health systems make diet a vital sign by integrating diet quality as a key metric every patient record. We are also supporting our healthcare partners in value-based contracts to predict and divert risk early, while effectively delivering engaging patient care.
What do you wish you knew when you were first starting that you know now?
I wish I knew how much more efficient I could be after having kids. If I had that foresight, I would have been much more productive before kids!
If you could meet any entrepreneur or business leader, dead or alive, who would it be and why?
I would love to meet Kara Swisher. She has been the eyes and voice of the “internet generation” for decades. She has interviewed every major leader—technology and otherwise—and has a practical, keen sense of what the future holds. If there is anyone who has the widest worldview with the most acute experiences with those building our future, it’s Kara.