Meet Hi.Q, a company testing your health consciousness

Vator will be highlighting the up-and-coming healthcare companies before Splash Health on Feb. 12th

With Vator Splash Health coming up soon, we've been focusing on different aspects of the healthtech space, including the companies that have raised the most money and  how quickly the space itself has been growing in recent years.

One big part of that involves discovering what the future of healthtech looks like, and the up and coming companies.

So VatorNews reached out to venture capitalists who invest in health companies to find out from them: who are the next generation of health companies, and the ones that will disrupt and shape the space in years to come.

One such company is Hi.Q, the company behind  Health IQ, a test that measures how health conscious a person is. The iOS app includes more than 10,000 experiential questions across 300 unique topic areas, certified by 30+ experts from various fields of medicine, nutrition and exercise, and calibrated with an audience of 250,000 individuals to determine which health facts and skills are the most important to long-term health maintenance.  

I spoke to Hi.Q Co-founder and Chief Executive Munjal Shah about the company, its mission and his vision for the future of healthcare.

EDITOR'S NOTE: On February 12th, Vator will be holding its first ever Splash Health event in Oakland, where speakers such as Dr. Katrina Firlik, Tom Lee, Founder & CEO of One Medical, and Ryan Howard, Founder & CEO of Practice Fusion, will be talking about the state of the healthtech space, and where they think it is going. (Get your tickets here).

VatorNews: What the problem is that you are trying to solve and how you are trying to solve it?

Munjal Shah: Hi.Q built our Health IQ app in order to develop the first comprehensive way to measure how health conscious a person is by measuring their health literacy.  We believe the first step to increasing the health literacy of the world is to measure it.  Our Health IQ test starts with a 30 question preliminary quiz that gives you an overall assessment of your knowledge.  

Thereafter you can assess you knowledge in one of 360 topics including very practical topics like: Natural remedies for arthritis pain, Caring for kids with ADHD, How to eat healthy at Chipotle, How to store vegetables for maximum nutrient retention, etc.  All of our topics where certified by experts such as the head of cardiology at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston, head orthopedic surgeon for the US Olympic team, etc.

Over time people improve their literacy by using the app by: 

• Active learning: After you take each question you get an explanation.  This gives users a quick atomic learning; 

• Study references: Users can study the original source of all of the questions they got wrong (and right if they want)

• Community: Our discussions board are unique in that they show the level of literacy in just that topic for each person posting a comment.  This allows you to know that you are getting advice from aknowledgable person because they were just tested.

VN: Who is your  average customer and what is a  typical use case for Hi.Q?

MS: Our customers are typically the Chief Health Officer (CHO) of their family.  They play the role as the primary caregiver to others (kids, older parents, siblings, etc).  80% of CHOs are women and their level of health consciousness tends to increase as they get older.

VN: How do you want to change the healthcare space? What is your vision for what it will look like in five to ten years thanks to what Hi.Q is doing?

MS: We want Healthcare to not just focus on behavior change but also on what we call behavior acceleration.  

There are a large group of people who have taken responsibility for their health but don’t have all of the skills and knowledge to manage it well.  We can help them learn more and learn it faster.  This might lead to more persistent impact than from behavior change.

In 5 to 10 years, hopefully every consumers knows their Health IQ in the same way some of the more health conscious ones know their cholesterol numbers or blood sugar.

VN: How many users do you currently have?

MS: Over 560K people having taken the Health IQ test. The product was only just launched on Dec 15th in the US.

VN: Have you been able to calculate any health benefits to those who use Hi.Q?

It is primarily an assessment app, but does tell you where you strong and weak in terms of subjects

After we’ve been live a year we’ll do another reassessment of users and see how much their Health IQ has improved.  So we are just a little early to answer the question today. That being said, most of the users of the app indicated just how much they learn.

VN: Have you raised any money yet and, if so, from which investors?

MS: We have raised  $5.3 million from Charles River Ventures, First Round Capital, Greylock, Menlo Ventures, and Rock Health.