Together by Renee is a new app unlocking health insights and simplifying healthcare processes, by using generative AI to measure vital signs, including blood pressure, heart rate and respiratory rate, simply by having users smile for a selfie. 

Why it’s notable:

• Together, offers users the ability to track their vital signs from their own phone, which is invaluable for individuals with chronic diseases and caregivers, allowing them to monitor their loved ones from far away. In conjunction with this feature, Together, encompasses a wide range of features designed to support ageing adults, individuals with chronic diseases and caregivers overwhelmed by healthcare responsibilities. With up to 50% of treatment failures and 25% of hospitalisations in the U.S. attributed to medication non-adherence, Together aims to solve this challenge by simplifying healthcare tasks and enhancing health outcomes through streamlined processes and adherence to care plans. A prime illustration of this is the ability for users to effortlessly capture an image of their pill bottles, enabling Together AI to automatically initiate prescription refills on their behalf.  

• In addition to this, Together tackles prevalent healthcare system hurdles like extended waiting times and restricted digital service availability. Leveraging its ability to recognise pill bottle images, the app employs AI to identify healthcare providers’ names, determine necessary appointments and utilises voice AI to automatically contact the doctor’s office, schedule appointments and seamlessly integrate them into the users calendar. By eliminating complex barriers for patients, Together empowers them to effortlessly adhere to their care plans and navigate healthcare with ease. 

Industry implications:

• In recent months, we’ve seen the explosion of generative AI across many industries. Generative AI has the potential to revolutionise the healthcare ecosystem with numerous applications across the value chain. The use of large language models (LLMs), a form of generative AI, has the potential to greatly impact clinical understanding, diagnosis and treatment of complex medical conditions as well as improve the accuracy, efficiency and effectiveness of health systems. However this technology is not without limitations. Biased datasets, inaccuracies, misinformation and privacy issues are just a few of the concerns around this new technology. Therefore the use of generative AI in healthcare is still limited to low-risk administrative use cases such as note taking, curation of patient reports and optimising workflow.

• Together is not the only company utilising smartphone camera technology to measure vital signs. Binah.ai uses the light reflecting from the user’s cheeks to read their heart rate, oxygen saturation, mental stress and more. Given the widespread availability of smartphones, this innovative approach empowers individuals to actively track their well-being. In the near future, it's plausible that consumers will carry a handheld diagnostic device, further enhanced by a validated AI algorithm. While future gazing, such a synergistic blend of technologies has the capability to revolutionise healthcare paradigms on a global scale.