Our guest today, Anand Parikh, General Counsel and Head of Business Development at Virta Health, joins the podcast for the first part in our series on Innovation in Chronic Disease Management. Anand began his career as Senate Fellow for the California State Senate and a clerk for the United States District Court. He then practiced at Morrison & Foerster LLP before joining Virta in 2015 as the company’s Chief of Staff, and 5th employee, and moving into his current role in 2016.
Virta is a treatment that safely and sustainably reverses type 2 diabetes without medications or surgery. Virta achieves this through innovations in nutritional biochemistry, data science, and digital tools combined with clinical expertise to shift the diabetes treatment paradigm from management to reversal. The company’s mission is to reverse type 2 diabetes in 100 million people by 2025 and they have some exciting clinical evidence and proven patient results to support that goal.
In this episode, we cover:
- Anand's background and his career and what led him to Virta
- The evidence that existed behind what Virta was trying to achieve when he joined the company
- The story of how the company came to be, how it was founded, and where the original business model came from
- Anand’s main responsibilities as General Counsel and Head of Business Development
- How the Virta Health model works from a diet and coaching perspective
- How Virta's technology platform has evolved over time
- How Virta leverages the data collected to iterate on the platform
- How Virta has taken something like diabetes treatment, which is inherently a high-touch and personal, and added a technology layer while ensuring not only patient buy-in but compliance
- The uses of behavioral economics Virta Health employs to drive patient change
- Anand tells us about the exciting results of Virta Health’s recent 1 Year Clinical trial
- The main goals of Virta’s recent fundraise
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