Jennifer A. Kingson
Axios What’s Next
Now coming to a mall, gym or office building near you: A self-contained doctor’s office, powered by artificial intelligence, where you — the patient — draw your own blood and take your own vitals.
Why it matters: The traditional annual checkup is being disrupted in various tech-heavy ways, from telehealth to concierge medicine to the CarePod, above, a DIY health clinic-in-a-box.
Driving the news: A company called Forward is installing CarePods around the country, with the hope that people will visit them regularly for preventative care and specific concerns.
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After buying a $99-a-month membership, a patient uses their phone to unlock the door, sits in the chair inside, and runs through a series of health apps.
You can do a biometric body scan, have your DNA sequenced, and test for hypertension, kidney disease and heart issues, among other things.
Your results are reviewed by doctors offsite, or you can talk to a doctor virtually while you’re in the CarePod.
Of note: The first three CarePods are in Sacramento, California; Chandler, Arizona; and Chicago’s Willis Tower, with plans to roll out many more in 2024.
How it works: First, the machine takes baseline readings of your metabolic functions so it can assess how you’re doing over time.
