Nourish has redesigned its patient app around a 24/7 AI health assistant that the company said is seeing strong engagement and promising outcomes.
The Health Assistant, which has been in beta and is now rolling out widely, gives patients personalized guidance between visits, including meal planning, lab insights and appointment prep support.
The generative AI tool draws on a patient’s medical record, labs, goals and Nourish clinical protocols, and is trained on millions of past data points. It also handles support questions, prescription management, insurance questions and scheduling, and escalates to humans as needed. Half of Nourish’s active patients engage with the tool every day.
With the tool, Nourish said patients are completing more of their goals set by their registered dietitian. They are scheduling labs at twice the previous rate. Nourish patients who see doctors for medical care are also signing up for those visits two to three times more, though the number of visits with dietitians has not increased. And users are logging meals 15% more per day.
While Nourish has always embedded AI in its model, it was interested in redesigning the entire patient experience to be AI-first.
“We were seeing patients using a lot of the disparate features … and those were driving a lot of engagement and outcomes, but the AI was driving the best clinical outcomes,” Aidan Dewar, co-founder and CEO of Nourish, told Fierce Healthcare in an exclusive look at the news. “AI understands all the different contexts on the patient and then [identifies] the next best thing.”
The tool’s use cases are extensive. A patient with prediabetes can log their breakfast, with the tool giving them feedback on the meal and its macronutrients. It can advise the patient on what to eat for lunch, based on their unique diet plan and health goals, and give them tailored recipes. A patient who wants to understand their Nourish labs can ask the tool for a summary in plain language, for support preparing for their next visit and recommendations on what to discuss with their provider. They can then message their dietitian those recommendations ahead of the appointment. The Health Assistant also supports dietitians because it gives them more insight into patient habits and concerns.
In terms of specific outcomes, Nourish is seeing a 15% increase in patient weight loss within 30 days among those with access to the chatbot and over 60 days a 30% increase in weight loss. It is also seeing a 20% increase in weight tracking.
The company attributes these changes to being able to drive behavior change. Because the tool gives patients timely nudges specifically based on their care plan, they log more consistently and complete more of their goals. Small daily actions compound, which is why weight loss progress widens over time.
Nourish already has an AI copilot for its dietitians to help them identify the right next step for a patient in their care journey. It offers AI-driven insights at the top of each patient note into what has happened between sessions. This includes a patient’s chatbot history and journaling insights. There's a clinical decision support feature, “Assist,” prompting clinicians with what to ask a patient about. About half of sessions use this feature. Nourish also layers on prescriptive guidance to providers, depending on the patient’s status, to ensure they celebrate wins, check for consistency or explore challenges.
Dewar believes that, in the long run, healthcare is headed toward AI-augmented care led by humans. As the company scales, Nourish is getting more data consistently, so it is seeing its large language models improve quickly.
“You can make care even more personalized and effective over time,” Dewar noted.