Adeel Malik | CEO of Clearstep

Alan Olsen: I’m sitting here with the Adeel Malik and he’s with clear step health as CEO and co-founder founder I so Adeel for the listeners here can you give us your journey what brought you up to where you are today?

Adeel Malik: Sure you know I spent my academic career really focused on the sciences basic science doing medical research at Johns Hopkins and you know I was really fascinated and compelled by the ability to really study processes and mechanisms that ultimately had an impact on people right discovering new ways to do things therapeutic you knew mechanism cell-lines this was all all towards the idea of actually improving healthcare eventually though you know I kind of had a shift in the way and in what I wanted really where I while it was still compelling to do the lab work I felt like I wanted to take a step back and work on more macro level problems that healthcare faces you know doing lab work and basic science research is definitely a noble cause but many of the things that you study affect a minority of the overall population while there are these other kind of macro drivers in healthcare where if you affect change on them for example like what work what we’re working on which is consumer access to care it affects millions and millions of people moving the needle by a tiny percentage actually really has a huge impact so you know I had studied finance I was a finance degree is our major as well and I decided after you know a few years of basic science research that I would go into healthcare consulting and that’s what I did I worked at Accenture in their health care practice for a number of years and that really did satisfy a lot of my interest in those macro drivers that I was talking about at an industry level but then I got a bug in me to do it myself and to you know see the problems that we were facing and take innovative approaches to solving them that you just can’t do at a big firm and that’s when you know kind of assembled my friends all the four co-founders of clear stuff we’re all good friends from either high school or college and each each one of the three that that you know I brought on after you know the original two really fulfilled an exact void or an exact Caen perspective that we needed to actually build build a solution that can do what I was saying before have an effect on millions and millions of people and for us specifically on increasing transparency in the care process and in the process of accessing care and just overall making care more accessible yeah.

Alan Olsen: Who would you say who’s your primary target for customer? Is it going to be  the healthcare institution or the individual physicians?

Adeel Malik: So we are our model is B to B to C meaning a customer is the health system so you know payers as well as providers but our end user is is the average person anyone literally you know right now really focus on just the US but the average American who you know comes down with some symptoms or has something that’s been going on chronically for a few months you just doesn’t know what to do what’s the next step should I go to the ER a specialist a primary care can I use virtual care for for what’s bothering me so really you know we sell and license configure our solution for existing healthcare institutions but ultimately the end user is just the average person let’s say their care.

Adeel Malik: Absolutely so you know the way clear stuff works is that you know you’re able to search your symptoms in free text you can describe the way you would to a doctor up to a paragraph of text we’ll take that and start asking the relevant that our a I will ask the relevant follow-up questions so you know you complain of a fever we’ll ask how long we’ll ask if you’re experiencing any other symptoms that are common what are you know serious ones we want to rule out and ultimately we’ll get you to a next step recommendation so considering everything you’ve told us what should you do know.

Alan Olsen: A few years back is that the the health care was unveiling his cellphone on the internet they came up with a WebMD and some of these other programs that first started to help with diagnosis and and then I saw there was a pullback so today we’re fast-forwarding and we got a few years under our belt what are you doing differently to overcome the some of the obstacles that have been there in the past where people would try to do self diagnosis in an industry that is heavily regulated.

Adeel Malik: Well I mean I think while there has been some pushback the data tells a different story right WebMD has insanely high utilization millions of searches a day mm-hmm the like number one or number two top Google search type of search is for symptoms or diagnosis health conditions so you know even despite the regulatory landscape from a consumer lens there people browsing or not looking for answers to care right answers to problems that they’re facing and you know we have to keep the regulatory mindset in our perspective as well and make sure that you know for for us we aren’t trying to diagnose right that’s something we aren’t trying to tell you that you have a particular disease what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to help you get to the right level of care so considering the acuity of your symptoms where should you go and we have really high engagement with our tool we know we’re filling a void that exists where WebMD is a bit more like an encyclopedia that you have to navigate and it’s more condition or disease focused rather than what’s bothering you let me help you get to the right point of care where someone that’s credentialed to tell you what you have can tell you what they have we’re not trying to take the place of that we’re really a routing mechanism as well more than.

Alan Olsen: Great response okay so Adeel I if a person wants to find out more about clear steps solutions where were they where we go?

Adeel Malik: clearstep.health we’re steps you can browse our our business solutions there or even if you’re just you can try out our symptom checker online and you can reach out to us.

Alan Olsen: Adelle thanks for being today!

Adeel Malik: Thanks so much for having me.

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This transcript was generated by software and may not accurately reflect exactly what was said.

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Alan L. Olsen, CPA, Wikipedia Bio

A bit about Adeel Malik | CEO of Clearstep:

While studying finance and neurobiology in undergrad, Adeel spent his time doing neuro-immunology research at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, contributing to several academic publications. After undergrad, Adeel was a strategy & analytics consultant with Accenture for several years where he worked with some of the largest institutions in healthcare across pharma, health tech, health systems, and retail clinics. Adeel’s skills in healthcare analytics, operations, sales, and his breadth of experience across the healthcare ecosystem enable him to lead Clearstep through the complexities of healthcare innovation.