Latest / App Minded / How Deepti Used AI to Solve Her Own Kidney Health Challenges
Transcript
- depti episode audio: My medications are changing and at some certain point of a time I had taken seventy to eighty bills every day, which is a lot, and then every third fourth day I get a call to just change the dose altogether. How my my mind is going to recall all this information. Debsie went from kidney failure and dialysis to building healthcare apps around problems she experienced herself. In this episode we talk about becoming a patient builder using AI to turn lived experience into apps And where that journey has taken her since. Let's get into it. Today I'm chatting with Depti, a brilliant builder who is leveraging AI to solve a healthcare problem she has personally experienced. Depti, welcome to AppMinand. Can you please tell a little bit about yourself and your background? Thank you so much, Nina, for creating this amazing platform to bring together people like me to share their journeys with the world. I am a kidney transplant survivor, a data engineer, as well as I recently started my own nonprofit Medimade foundation. A little bit about my educational journey. By education, I'm an engineer. I did my engineering in 2011 from India, worked for big companies for a while, then came to US to do masters from Purdue in MSN Business Analytics, then have been working for big companies like Google, Intute. Wayfair and my current role is a data engineer at a digital pharmacy gift health. And in 2024, my life took upside down. I was diagnosed with kidney failure and was on eight months of dialysis. Then I got my transplant, had like a lot of challenges in post transplant recovery, and then had to rebuild my career from the start because once my medical leave was over from transplant. I did not had a job. So I started using AI first to build my career, build some real-time projects to talk about in the interviews, apply for jobs, and then I landed up my current role at Gift Health as a senior data engineer because one of the projects I actually showed them interview was the one I wipe coded it myself and then presented it to a couple of conferences. And then I got more interested in building the apps and the wipe coding. I initially taught couple of people in my company and couple of friends circle and how I'm using AI, how they can build simple agents. And then one day I got some invite of a hackathon by this group product five women. They were using Lovable. So I thought let me take part in it. And me and my friends won first prize in the hackathon. excellent. And after that I got so much encouraged that for almost like four or five months I explored Lovable, Replet, Codex, Clot Code, Natan Twin reload these workflow automation and wipe coding tools to create different products, take part in hackathons. And even I actually have organized a hackathon recently for high schoolers and just many hackathons. So wipe coding has really influenced my life in how someone can really build something in a very quick second. If previously if I have a problem, I'm a founder who don't know any coding. I would need to look out for an engineer, spend months and looking for the right engineer if I'm t tuning in well. But I can just build an MVP in a few hours and then go to the investors and then hire the team later on. You started off because you had a kidney issue. That kind of sparked the whole thing. You were in a in a foreign country and having issues with your kidney. How was that experience and dealing with the everything that comes with kidney issues? So actually i it was like a normal day like this. I was in between of my work day. I was not feeling well. I went to ER I told them I'm not feeling well, I'm choking. So they took like usual in the emergency in the US. They do blood work, they do urine tests, run through a couple of scans and after four hours a nephrologist just came and told me that both of my kidneys had failed and Then I started dialysis and then after a few months of in center and home dialysis because I used to do my own dialysis for eight months. I was lucky one day I got a call and got a transplant from an infant and that really encouraged me that how fast the technology is moving. Like I just had a span of eight months. I was diagnosed within the four hours of reaching a hospital and was given two hours to reach the hospital to get a transplant which changed my life forever. I was not in working in the healthcare. I am a software engineer or a data engineer or an app builder, but I had worked in the companies like Google and Tute, never in a healthcare. And that prompted me to enter into the healthcare field so that I can really leverage my own patient experience and help in solving the some of the gaps I had experienced. And in fact, my first wipe coding project was a streamlit-based application. I wipe coded using some hospital data publicly available. That shows the various metrics metrics and even had the self-service analytics enabled where user can ask any questions about the data, see the code benefit, and get some interesting insights out of it. That that's quite a quite a journey. How did that transition from a patient into building something for yourself and maybe others? How did that happen? There were many problems. Like the first part was the full part, to be honest. But that was the first app I had actually taken part in hackathon and won the first prize. I was always frustrated what do I eat, what do I cook? Because when you are undergoing THLS and post-transplant, you need to be very careful. Even though I found that chat GPT YouTube and there are too many resources available online. But I spent more time three to four hours looking through the recipes and not able to make a decision. So I wiped a simple app Nourishly in a hackathon and won a first try. So we specifically designed that app people recovering from the chronic diseases and we started off by building the kidney disease the first module where based on the patient's kidney journey as well as energy levels and other constraints the app would generate recipes which are meeting my own dietary requirements which I found to be pretty cool because that was the first thing I buried when I'm home. What do I cook? I don't want to spend too much time as a patient looking through these recipes and end up getting confused and just eating boiled eggs to be honest. Yes. I also want even I I'm a patient, I also want to eat healthy food as well as food which is nutritious because I'm a foodie and food is the best way people can recover from any disease. So you really built a app that fix fixed your own problem. Exactly. And I did not know that I thought I'm building it for myself, but there are so many people in who are battling the kidney disease. There are some time some people are on dialysis, some are post transplant, or some are actually about to transition to dialysis on stage three or stage four. Different stages. kidney solutions or kidney stories postmasters or Facebook groups. It's a genuine concern of any patient or any caregiver. So that was one of your apps. You have multiple apps, right? So can you pick one and talk about that a little bit more? Yes. So my next app was Medimate because that's a name of the non profit I founded in February, Medimate Foundation. So after Transplant I had a hard time managing my own medications. I need to ensure that I take these medications on time as well as the one of the biggest issues I was finding that I go to lab work, the doctor sees something in the lab, change my medication altogether, either the those or add like a new level. And being a data person who would build a dashboard to store some kind of these things. And what doctors gave me was like a sheet of paper Basically to make all those changes. I'm like I cannot I I don't know like paper or Excel sheet. Let me build an app for it. So I took part in Rip It Built It In and built this application made which is right now on Apple Store as well. And we're actually expanding it beyond to make it like a full fledged platform by working together with the transplant centers and dialysis centers so that more people can benefit from that. Because the biggest gap I see that medical records are disconnected might I go to my gynecologist, she'll recommend something. So I'll get a new medication added. My other doctor will recommend something and then I have my own trans medication. There's so much information and every doctor in the appointment wants to know that what is are the total medications I'm taking in and even how these medications react with each other, what were their doses bef and during this time to this time, because after a certain period of time they just revise the dose seeing my lab work. So that's how Mediment captures that and another part was that every day I need to check my blood pressure, temperature and weight ever since I was diagnosed. When I was going to dialysis center, my dialysis center took care of that part and check check those. But now I am pretty much well recovered in transplant. I need to do it manually twice and record it. So it's like let me just store everything in the app itself that can really help if something goes wrong with my body because I don't know if many people know that. The transplant recovery is a long process. The first year is pretty hard. And I lived in the transplant center for three months. Total. You realize you have a lot of data, a lot of things you need to track. How people were tackling this before? Was it like a little notebook or how were they tracking all this data themselves, the patients? For medication, I asked the people, they're like we just have like reminder set on the calendar. I'm like my medications are changing. And at some certain point of a time I had taken 70 to 80 bills every day, which is a lot. And then every third fourth day I get a call to just change the dose altogether. How my my mind is going to recall all this information. I cannot simply depend on a piece of paper. And what if I'm travelling? What if I'm not feeling well? If I have to tell my family member. How how is that being captured? People and some people use the apps like Medisafe, which I did not like it because I did not wipe it. Because I specifically felt that it's a very generic app and I'd only need to focus on only on the certain aspects specific to my own condition. And it was not giving me very personalized experience. Right. Awesome. So you built this app. How how did you build it? What was your tech stack? build it using Replet and Twilio because I need the Twilio to send me the alerts and like c phone calls or messages and even a alert the tier team as well. And Replet is a pretty good platform. It not only allowed me to create like an entire UX design using Replet design, but also it has a plan board where I could plan how I want the app to be built. These are the UX frame where wireframes I got and it it was so nice that even though I have never built a mobile app myself. It allowed me to launch the app in the Apple Store. Yeah. And that's not an easy job to do. I mean I I did run into issues with the Apple Store to be honest while launching the app because I later on after talking to the experienced Apple developers that this is a common issue. But that still gave me confidence to that I can do something beyond the my regular job. I can expand my skill and even I can identify the simple problems around me and solve them using the simple apps. Initially you said you also focused a lot more on features than the problem. The hardest part is like what features you need to prioritize the first thing. Yeah, you want like I want hundred things in in the app. You need to be really specific in the prioritize it. Which is adding the most value right now to get the traction in the app. Something which you think maybe the simple thing might not add in very value as a business if you think about the as a as a business person. But as a user, they may find more value. How did you make sure that you kinda keep it neat package in the beginning and ship it? rather than I started actually customer discovery call by talking to other patients, even my manager and other people around me. Who I thought could help in prioritizing that what are the their basic needs? Like what is the biggest problem they are facing at the moment? Like when I spoke to many patients, their biggest problem was that they forget to take it on the time. And even for the blood pressure and all that, I was surprised that many people do not measure it on the regular basis. While I was showing my app to my nephrologist and couple of doctors, they were more interested in knowing about my medical history and recommended to go for a genetic testing because my father actually expired uro kidney failure. So I just d thought, okay, let me order the kit and went to my primary care provider. It was a simple test and after one month the result came out positive. My app actually let me discover the reason of kidney failure two years after getting diagnosed. I I was actually kind of surprised because I never anticipated. I thought throughout my entire lifetime I would never know the reason of my kidney failure. All I needed was like build an app and reach out to right people for the customer discovery in the product market and I found my answers. What did the doctor say about the app that you built to track everything? Were they like, that's nice, actually somebody's tracking and there's clear data. Or were they like, what were the comments? No, they loved it because this was coming right out of a patient ex lived experience. Because most of the time the people who build these kind of apps in past were the engineers, not the patients. I'm like, I'm a patient builder and due to white coding, it made me even confident to build an app. If you spoke about the pre-AI era or pre-wipe coding era, I won't e even have the answer for that for you. But now as a patient, if you find some something a problem You can just wipe out your app. And the doc my doctor was impressed. And he actually recommended a couple of features that this is what as a doctor I want in this app. Because he started telling me l other things and other patient stories which I did not even know existed. Yeah. That's amazing. He even contributed to more customer discovery call indirectly and helping me understand more depth. And that's how I kept on s talking to more patients and then eventually coming up with the pr proper plan to How do I commercialize and make money with it eventually? Right now it's available free of cost for any patient they want to try. Use it. I'm perfectly o okay with that part. Yeah. So what is your plan with the app going forward? So want to actually integrate it within the existing clinical workflows and include entire ecosystem in place, whether it's a patient, the caregiver and the doctor as an added layer and support the patient's journey. once they're out of the transplant hospital as a continuous mechanism because post-transplant medication adherence is one of the reasons of the graft rejection. I yeah I actually started having the podcast with a couple of kidney patients who are in the waiting time for waiting for second or third transplant. And this was actually revealed to me in one of the podcasts by a patient himself that they forgot to take their medication on time because they were busy building their life post transplant and took life for granted. Yeah. My ab always reminds me that I do not need to take my life for granted because I got a gift from someone's generosity that I never know. How has this crisis that also impacted your career in hindsight in very good ways? You actually became maybe found a new way to your career or near like I just found like a new vision for my career and the right path to progress, like something which I'm more passionate about rather than the work I was previously doing. It gave me like right direction. I was able to work with the right people who are in the same path and gave me like okay, like this is something which is going to accelerate my career. Yeah, I did had the post break because I was battling dialysis and the post transplant was in hospital for a pretty long time, but when I came back I it gave me like clear direction too on what areas I should focus where I can utilize my own real time patient journey experience to really bring the tangible benefit to the healthcare system, specifically in US. Because as a patient I know the gap real well. Whether as a patient how much time I had spent battling with the financial part the or even understanding what are the benefits as a patient, I n I'm actually eligible to. Many patients don't know that. Yeah, I I can imagine that the US system being hard to tackle financially and then medically and all the way to the what kind of food can you eat? It's it's a lot to take in when you are feeling probably the worst in your life. Yeah, you're already at the lowest point when you're life. You have lost all your confidence. And since I was building these things, my confidence started increasing. I was able to talk about the things I'm doing to my interviewers and even the people I was meeting through LinkedIn so that they know what value I'm bringing in. I'm like I'm not only a patient, I could actually use my problems to develop a solution because everyone look for a problem solvers. Yes, that's true. Have you had some feedback of any of your apps from People that don't know you that they just downloaded an app or started using it. Have you got some feedback? Everyone loved it. They invent in fact started sending me the new feature request. Excellent. In fact, one of my patient directory, so a couple of nonprofits actually embedded the that app in their own website too. So th that's how I actually get traffic naturally without spending anything on the marketing from w working with other nonprofits in the kidney space. Like Like, okay, this has all the resources for the patients. Can we use it? Yeah. If it can help anyone, I'm okay with that part. And my vision was to make sure sure that the resources are free of cost for the patients. You have the Medimade is a foundation, so it's non profit. how do you manage the cost that you still accrue building these apps? So actually there are a lot of grants available for the nonprofits working in the tech space, which s in US and even in fact different countries. So you need to look around those part. I'm yet to actually do that. And recently I hosted an hackathon for healthcare, especially for high schoolers specifically. Yeah. Where did you get the idea or to have one for high schoolers? it actually it was my friends who have high school kids who were like You have one profit. Can you involve them somewhere? Can you give them an internship? And I was in between like I cannot pay them right now. And in fact, yesterday I met one of the parents who actually benefited from this hackathon. And the at actually I was surprised to get the feedback that their daughter did not like the computers or wipe coding at all. But due to this hackathon, she has got so much interested in is building another app for herself. And this I was particularly impressed by her journey because she's also a patient builder like me. She suffers from Hashimoto's autoimmune disorder and has right. So she in the Hakathon she utilized to build an app Hyrovinx so that people who are battling this disease can use this somehow. And this girl And she she was the one who really didn't did not want to do the wipe coding and the coding at all. I mean, even if one person is benefiting and taking that the wipe coding or building apps is not only for the computer in general, even if you don't know how to code or hate coding. If they can be someone can benefit, I'm actually impressed. Everyone has a different problem as a teenager or a high schooler. They're you and I cannot even think about the problems they are facing. So I think that Hackathon gave them the right platform to solve their problems. They come up with the solutions by the things the kids have built, identifying the problems. Like there are many areas in the healthcare which are neglected because people don't know how to wipe build the apps previously without wipe coding. But with these wipe coding tool, if you have a problem, even if you're a teenager, you can just build an app for it. And yeah. I yeah, I agree. I think it's amazing that especially women coming more into this space, there aren't too many app builders who are women and of all ages, because now anybody can really build the first prototype or working app with AI. I think it's gonna change the scene and the landscape quite quite drastically, which I'm very happy for. Yes, we we need more women to come because in fact I had actually recently volunteered for a non profit play like a girl. So they were actually telling that in the middle school is the time when the girls lose interest in the step build and the coding. So this year their theme was an AI accelerator. So they invited me to be one of the fireside chat person where the girls ask me a lot of questions about what I do. What are the apps I'm building and even the advice I have for them and even judge their projects in Hackathon. What are your plans going forward with your apps and maybe hackathons? what w what's cooking up? So I'm actually looking partnering with a couple of other co-founders to build my app into a proper structure to commercialize them, as well as for a hackathon. So we're planning to host a second one sometime in the January or February. by partnering with some other non profits so that we can get more attraction, more funding to encourage these kids. And since I got no a no network of the kids to help me out because there were like fifty five participants in my hackathon and twenty two projects. I can take their own feedback to improve the hackathon to see that what they like, what they do not like and take it to the next level. Yeah. Yeah. Have you You did the hackathon for teenagers or do you also teach other women or people in general how to wipe codona? Yes. So I had actually given couple of sessions with this group, women applying AI and AI powered women on some of the tools which I use commonly like Lovable, Replet or even automation tools like NITN, Twin Rilo, which I have personally ex used myself. So I do Teaching, free of cost, because nobody nobody should AI education needs to be free. This is one of my thinking because they're already going to spend too much time in paying to the Claude Lovable and Cursor Replet for building the apps, right? Yeah. And what has the feedback been from these trainings or sessions? Have you have people what kind of apps have they built? They're building pretty interesting applications. Like one of the person I know she was able to actually build an app to manage her schedule with the twins. She has a twins. She's a twin mother. And she was hi finding it hard to work around their schedules w along with her full time job, managing the household course. So she built an app for that. Another one actually built an app to our she's actually one of my mentee. she's a Muslim, so she was on a career break for a while. So she built an app to teach Islamic values to kids, especially between the age of zero to six years. Like they have like a storytelling part for the kids, some quizzes and even painting, sending the letters, some interesting features. I love it when now that anybody can build anything basically. the ideas that comes up, it's it's it's mind boggling. Why didn't these things exist before? But You know. Yep. It it's very interesting because she was scared, like, I don't know how to do this. I'm I like and she used to actually volunteer for a couple of daycare and is pretty good with the kids and have a four year old daughter. So she picked up a gender problem and as an immigrant in a new country, you find it hard to teach your own religious value to the next generation. So she is used the white coding as the platform to help the even other parents in the same journey as hers. If somebody's now listening and thinking about like I have an idea, what kinda tips would you give them to actually make the idea into a real thing? Okay, it's go to the chat GPT or Clot, spend some time debating out the idea, refining the features in the you can pick the AI tool of your choice. You can use clot code, you can use cursor, you can use codex, replet, lovable boot, emerging. There's so many of them. Pick any of them you like and or even base forty-four and just start building. Just debate a little bit with the chat GBT or a cloud and also see that what's the best way you can save money on the tokens because prompting is easy, but giving the right prompt is difficult because these are AI systems they do hallucinate, you can earn tokens in no time. So just plan a little bit while talking to the chat GBT or a cloud, whichever you are comfortable with. How Has your own building process changed from the first app you created to the last one? It has changed a lot because I spent more time planning on the features, the UX, even the workflow, and more time on the customer discovery call before finalizing and building anything. Previously I just used to go ahead put up a prompt mostly from my own perspective now since I built the apps for other people. So I spent more time while in the pl planning part and coming up with the right prompts than before. And it actually has improved the quality of the apps and even the overall experience users can get from the apps. So if anybody's listening now, where can they find more about you and especially your apps? So you can check out on on me on my LinkedIn profile. I can send you the link after this call. They can reach out to me directly. And ask me any questions about the apps I'm building, the work I do, or even want to collaborate with me or have my advisor because of my apps. So I advise a lot of the people who are building the apps on the new features, choosing the right tools and and any kind of intervice that can help them out. Awesome. Thank you very much, Dev too, for coming in today for the episode. I really loved hearing your story. I when you filled in the questionnaire. I was already reading your stories like this. I've had few others who who beca started off as a patient and became a builder. and I've done that journey as well. And I really wanted to hear your story and Hear how how that happened. So thank you very much for joining today. Thank you, Nina, for creating this amazing platform for women and happy to support you in any way I can I can. Thank you again, Debti, for sharing your story. What I really liked about hearing her story was that the app did not start from a clever idea. It came from real life struggles she was going through. And that struggle was present every day. What can I eat? Did I take the right medication? What was my blood pressure or temperature? How do I keep track of all of this? And especially when the medication changes out of the blue. And because she lived all these problems herself, she could see the problem and the solution from the patient's point of view. Not from an outsider, not from a doctor, not from another app builder. actually her real life experience. And that I think is a trend that we're going to see more and more in the app space. Patients becoming builders and building the tools that they need when they are at the worst with healthcare, when they truly need help, but don't have it, because nobody knows what you're going through. But now with the AI, patients can build any tool that they need at the time when they need it the most. So thank you again Depth Lee for sharing your story. I'll put all the links for her apps and how to contact her on LinkedIn in the show notes. If you enjoyed this episode, follow App Minded wherever you're listening and until next time, keep on building and shipping.