356 - Remote Care for Everyone: The Future of Accessible Healthcare Solutions with Theo Harvey

Welcome to Listening with Leaders. I'm Doug Noll, lawyer turned peacemaker. I teach executive leaders how to listen to emotions rather than words so that they can become the leaders everyone wants to follow. And I teach those same leaders how to be authentically present, available, and connected to their families despite being insanely busy. I have learned that we are 98% emotional and only 2% rational. Learning how to listen to emotions is, in my experience, the foundational skill of life. Stick around to the end of the show and I'll reveal how you can be on our next guest in 15 to 20 minutes. So let's get started.

Theo Harvey, welcome to Listening with Leaders. You have a really interesting background, but right now I guess the best way to introduce you is the founder and CEO of a company called sensormed.com. There we go. And it's a really interesting application of outpatient care, especially for people who might find difficulty in accessing care on a daily basis. Anyways, welcome to the show. And I want to— my first question is always tell us your backstory. How do you get to where you are today?

Absolutely. Thanks for inviting me to this podcast. And for the listeners, my company SensorMed, I'm the co-founder and CEO. We are an AI healthcare company. Patients and doctors are remote care as a service platform. You know, how I got started with SensorMed basically was like everyone else. I was going through my life working in big tech, a large corporation in technology.

You worked for Cisco for a long time?

Yes, I did. I worked for Cisco Systems, which is a large telecom networking company. Went from engineering to sales, did very well. But just like anyone, something happened where it just changed my life forever. And that's when I had my firstborn, my daughter. And Layla, spoiler alert, she's 13. She's older, doing well. But when she was firstborn, she had a respiratory issue, and so she had to go to NICU and dealing with that for a couple of days. Finally, she was released, but we had to keep coming back and forth to the doctor. That travel time, and at the time we lived in Metro Atlanta, so just trying to deal with that traffic to get to the doctor, find parking, and then finally sit in the waiting room to see the doctor for 5 minutes was just very taxing in addition to dealing with all the healthcare-related issues that she had to deal with. So it was in the midst of that downturn that I really realized there had to be a better way. And that's when the impetus of Sensormed came up. It was like, can we find a way to connect to the doctors remotely, more effectively, securely, so that we can get the help— my doctor can get the help she need and also can be more convenient for me and my wife? And that's when we started. And that was, wow, almost 10 years ago when I first had that initial idea and went down a rabbit hole of what that would look like. So yeah, so that changed my life from going down the corporate path to have an idea for entrepreneurship, to get funding from VCs, and then taking off to the races from there. So it was definitely—

It looks like this is one of those stories where you continued to work at Cisco and did this as a side gig until you could get it launched and moving.

Yeah, absolutely. I would say anyone, obviously test it out and don't just change your day job right away. But it was one of those where I found good partners. Collaboration is key when you're trying to build a company. So luckily with my co-founder, he has experience, over 15 years experience in the health IT space.. And so we came together to build something over time. When we first got our first customer, that's when I said, this, there's some legs to this, and went off from there. So it's one of those things, you're right, it's just learning to getting that product market fit to realize if the problem that you're seeing is validated. And the best way it's validated is people pay you money for it. So that's what got me moving forward.

Tell us a little bit about your educational background. You, you look like me, overeducated.

Yeah, you see all the degrees behind me. Yeah, went to undergrad as an engineer at Florida A&M. UM, based out of Florida. And then from there, in particular, the master's at Georgia Tech. Took a little bit, worked, and then I started— when I got into sales, I got my master's in business at Emory. I pretty much in Georgia, a Georgia guy, I got all my degrees there and even taught a little bit at Georgia State there as well. So it's one of those things where I definitely think education helps. It gives you a way of thinking, a clear understanding of how to solve any problem. And so I think that's what— whether I remember what an equivalent is or how to do circuits, I I still know how I can reason through knowledge and understand how to solve a solution, which is really important.

How do you build your leadership skills?

Yeah, great question. It was built over time. First, being the oldest of 4 children, that was one of the things that really opened my mind to what it means to kind of lead without having to lead, if that makes sense. So basically people look up to you and realize there's a burden on you and then get into some leadership positions in college and realizing I have a knack for this. And really to me, leadership is about showing discipline, showing the skills, abilities, the things that you want the people to do, and you're like the model, and then making sure people follow that. And then taking that, when I went to corporate America, and what— there you're using soft skills. You don't really have power when you're an individual contributor. So you're looking at how do you influence people with your thoughts, your ideas, your plans. And then from there, finally able to have some management experience prior to leaving Cisco and then finally start my own business where I had to hire people, fire them, and learn how to lead them and provide a vision for the future and making sure we get the right people toward that vision. So it was just a progression of just understanding how to manage people from early days to the final step and always learning. I think the key of all great leaders is they're continuously learning how to be better leaders and better communicators, because that ultimately helps you get better results for your team members.

So how many employees do you have now?

Yeah, right now we have over 35 employees across the country, about 15 or so worldwide. And we use a lot of virtual assistants as well. And we're a truly virtual-first team, remote team, if you will. It started prior to the, the pandemic and COVID. So we believed in that kind of model and we stayed to that even post-pandemic because we just believe that you can just have more options if you have a remote team because you can get so many more resources wherever you need them.

Absolutely.

So yeah, we stay true to that over time.

How did you learn how to move from being a producer to being a leader? Two very different roles. A lot of leaders have a real problem with them. They need to micromanage because they don't know how to let go. They've never really learned how to lead. So the only way they maintain their identity is by doing stuff, by being a producer. Right. And that always seems to be a big transition problem for people.

It is. Usually you become a leader because you're good at what you do. And so when you try to— not because you're good at leading. Exactly. And so when you do transition that leadership role, it's a whole different skill set to your point, because. And you start to hire people and you realize, oh, I could do it better than they can. And you said, but do you realize that it would never scale or grow because you're a limiting factor? And once you understand that, then you start to say, okay, what skills can I enhance to, to bring on the right team members, to identify A-players, to train folks, to get them to the next level? What formats, what kind of systems in place? We use a lot of standard operating procedures to understand what kind of things they knew, which sets a standard to what they need to live by and to do. The job well. And so once you understand that your job as a leader is really creating the environment, like the coach, and then the players have to play, then you start to realize, okay, this is how I can get better at just being this. Because if I can get good at this, then really the ability for the company grows unlimited, because it's no longer limited by just what you can do. You can only do so much by what you can do.

Yeah.

But when you have leadership, then you can lead millions of people to do amazing things.

I think you're repeating something I hear often from my guests, which is your first 4 or 5 hires are your most important. And hiring people who can do what you can't do is the most important job of a leader. Getting the right people into the right place and making sure they're all focused on the same goals and then stepping back and letting them do their thing. That's—

absolutely. And I would just add, as a leader, you have to realize what are you really good at.. And if you can just focus on that and then start to delegate more and more of the pieces that, you know, you, you maybe not as good at and being comfortable in that, then I think that is where you find peace. And you realize as a leader, really your goal is to start piecing off more and more of your job so you can just be really focused on that one or two things that really is gonna move the needle for your business or your department or your, your team. And so I think that's what I'm continuously focused on, like how can I scale the team. I cannot focus on the good thing that only I can do in the company and pass off the other things that ultimately I have the ultimate responsibility. But can I delegate, put the structure in place so we can make sure that delegation is being followed up on?

So that, of course, raises the question, what is the one thing that you're really good at?

Great question. It's a constant evolution of what that means. But obviously, as the leader, CEO, I think someone told me you got like really 3 jobs, right? You got, you know, Show the vision. So if you think of a bus, right, where's the bus going? Making sure people are on the bus, the right people on the bus. And if people gotta leave the bus, making sure they get off the bus and make sure there's enough fuel for the trip. And so making sure I raise the capital, making sure I have the right people on the team and make sure we know where we're going. And so those are the 3 things I focus on getting sharper on all 3 all the time.

Yeah, it's very close to the, what I call the 3 psychological skills of a leader, which is focus, direction, and safety. And the focus is obviously keeping people focused on task. Safety is creating psychological safety in the organization. And direction is providing goals for people. Absolutely.

So they know where to go. Absolutely.

And when you do that, when you provide those 3 psychological services, you take a mob and turn it into a team. Interesting ideas.

So what is it that gets you up in the morning today?

You've been doing this now for 13 years or so, more than that. What is it that gets you really excited?

Absolutely. I think where we are is an inflection point in healthcare and just in any industry right now with the rise of AI, artificial intelligence. And so one of the things that we're really super excited about is just building— how can we leverage AI to enhance the patient-to-doctor channel? Everyone's talking about replacing it, but we just believe that AI can really help enhance that communication channel more so than people realize. And to us, that's really our aim over the next first half of 2026, is to release AI solutions that will make the human-to-human connection the main focus, not an afterthought.

This is all brand new. ChatGPT launched out a little bit more than 2 years ago and the world exploded.

Absolutely.

And now you got all these other models out there. So are you developing an AI model that does this work or are you taking the stuff that's already out there and just adapting it to, to your work?

Great question. A little bit of both. Obviously there are some foundational models like OpenAI, Lea Claude, just Meta, just using their kind of models and because they've invested billions of dollars into these and understanding that. Exactly. But I do feel there is a case for healthcare and certain industries to build their own kind of models with open source type models because that data is the new oil. They've been saying that for years, but even more so now with AI. And so we have unique data sets. For instance, this year alone, we've had over 3 million patient-doctor interactions, and we're seeing that to triple this year. So to us, there's data around like, what's the best time to reach out to a patient? What kind of communication channel is good for patients to be more compliant? What gets patients up to be excited about their health? That data set is something that is really our IP. So we can leverage our own kind of AI models and build upon that and enhance that. And that just makes our IP that much more valuable. So I think AI can be a lubricant, not replacing, because it's something that is building on, you know, what it knows now, right? But we're trying to build new stuff. So once we have that new stuff, let's build AI to unpack that and figure out ways to continue to build new stuff. That's how I'm looking at artificial intelligence now, especially for healthcare. And we have regulations that we have to deal with, right, that's unique to our industry around HIPAA protecting patient data, things like that, that those foundational models have not been built to handle that yet.

So how— give me an example of how you would incorporate AI into remote patient care.

Yeah, absolutely. Remote care as a service using AI, we're looking at two facility ways, two easy ways to engage that. For instance, personalization. Before, when you reached out to a patient, it was more generalized. Say, hey Doug, just, you're not taking your blood pressure, you're taking your meds, do this. But if it's more personalized, it can now speak to you. Hey, Doug, I know you're going to have your daughter's wedding. You want to walk in the wedding. You want to give her away. Let's walk through the steps to do that. Step 1, did you lower your salt intake? It's Christmas time. We know you like to go to your cousin's house. So what are you going to do to mitigate against that? So really personalizing— personalized medicine is here now, right? So how can we personalize that with the help of AI? Personalization at scale is going to be key for health and changing behaviors because now people feel like they're being seen. And heard, and that's ultimately going to change it moving forward.

Yeah, we were talking that before the show about how important it is for people to feel deeply validated. Do you have the, the mechanisms in place to do that, or is this something that's in development right now?

Absolutely. Yeah, that is something that we are launching in next year. So this little preview— so this is something that we're starting to roll out with some of our current clients right now and testing it out. But ultimately, we want to roll out to every patient. Our goal is to have every patient on planet understand what it means to have truly remote care as a service at scale.

And so if a patient has a question, for example, or is experiencing something, they can just hop onto the platform, ask a question, and presumably get an informed response. And at some point in time, there's a triage process that occurs that flags, oh, we got somebody that needs some help more than the AI can.

Yeah, absolutely. You hit the nail on the head. And I think that's low level, the beginning stages. A lot of companies are doing that kind of customer support, kind of low chat-based interface. But the next level of that is that personalization where it becomes one with the patient and they're seeing it as really their health informant and making sure they're apprising them, hey, I'm about to go out to eat. Should I eat this? Or hey, here's what your plan is for the next week from a healthy lifestyle. So making it more embedded into the human, make it more proactive as opposed to reactive.

And I also presume that this is all being monitored. So if something does show up that says that we need a human intervention, that the signal is sent to somebody to say, oops, let's check and see what's going on here.

Absolutely. Human in the loop is so vitally important, right, in every type of industry, especially in healthcare. So you do want to have someone that's reputable. And again, our vision is for AI to enhance the human connection, so, so not to replace it totally. We're not going to have AI doctors. We can, but I still think there's that vital connection from a human-to-human connection, because let me just give you a thought experiment. Have you been in a situation or maybe you heard a loved one or you've been there when a doctor is saying some hard news, right? Maybe cancer or there's some other issues. And a lot of times the patients listen to the recommendations from the doctor. You want that human response when that patient says to the doctor, what would you do, doctor? And that AI can't do that, right? When AI said, if this is my life and I was making a decision, I would do this. And you feel more comfortable about that decision making. And to be honest, in the midst of maybe some not pleasant options, but at least you feel there was a human that was considering that. And I think that makes all the decision, makes all the difference in the world.

This is fascinating. What is it, Theo, about you personally that makes all of this so successful?

That's an interesting question. Just someone who didn't came out by this from my experiences just dealing with the health industry and understanding how it can be shaped and changed for innovation.. And then now by touching so many different lives over the years and hearing patients' stories that drive— we've saved literally lives, hundreds of lives just for simple things of just making sure a patient was unresponsive and making sure our nurses call 911 or alerting the doctor to a patient that is going down in their readings when it comes to blood pressure. So yes, we want to scale and grow and grow revenue and profitability, but I think also we're actually changing people's lives and saving people's lives. It's been countless people we probably saved lives from, and I think that what kind of keeps me motivated and going, because think of this company didn't exist, how many of those lives that weren't saved.

The other thing I saw on your website is you guys are able to take devices, medical devices, and take the data from the medical devices, incorporate it into all of this, a feedback loop going on.

And that's where the remote care as a service gets into, because before, yes, you can have telehealth, which is a visit, but that physiologic data is so important. So understanding what's your heart rate, what's your blood pressure, what's your glucose levels? So there can be some qualitative decision-making. How many times you go to the doctor and the first thing they always do is get lab tests. They need to know data before they can make a clinical decision. And so likewise, that's something we truly believe in, making sure we have these devices and technology that's pulling data to make better decision-making for the patients.

That's amazing. Are your client— what, your clients from all over the place, or are they mostly in the Southeast?

Yeah, great question. So typically we do have a lot of clients in the Southeast, but you'd be surprised, we have several that are based out of New York, California, and we have a large Chinese American contingent as we start to work with more payers and different diverse patient populations. So, yes, so it's, it can be all over depending on the needs of the patient populations. And so I think what we're trying to do is migrate more into Middle America as we see more opportunities there., but this is something that can be enhanced worldwide even because chronic conditions affect everybody, every person on the planet.

So what do you see in for the future of the company?

Where's it going?

Great question. Yeah, I hinted at that. Remote care as a service for every person on the planet, truly having access to affordable care. We talk about the triple access in healthcare, affordability, access, and quality. And so I think remote care as a service hits on all three. Get the access. It can be a little bit more reasonably priced because you're having a connection with technology that can lower the cost of delivery. And then the quality is increasing with the help of AI, getting better metrics and data to understand what's happening with that patient at scale. So our goal is to continue that path and grow in a company so that we can impact every human being on the planet.

That's amazing. One more question. I'll let you go, Theo. What's one thing about yourself that we would never know about unless you revealed it to us?

I don't know if you can see behind me, but I'm a Star Wars and sci-fi junkie.

Oh, there you go.

If you just look at the background here. Yes, that's one of the things that drew me into innovation and technology in the first. I think I went to see Empire Strikes Back. I may be showing my age here, actually in the theater when I was young. And that kind of changed my life of what it meant to go to space or just thinking about outside of what's possible. And so I think when sometimes when we feel like nothing's changing or we're fighting back and forth, I do feel like the future is always hope because you can build it for something else because it doesn't exist yet. And you can build innovation, technology solutions, and better ways of communicating with people over time with that hopeful, pleasant look. And so definitely being a sci-fi fan helps with that.

Good for you.

Just on that note, let's see, I think— The first Star Wars movie came out in the summer of '77, and I was studying for the bar exam.

Oh wow, okay.

Afternoon off. Yeah, broke the rule, broke the rule off and got into the— when we went in, they just opened that day and there was nobody. We just walked in, it was nothing. When we came out of the theater, the line was 2 times around the block. I guess the word got out really fast.

Yeah, that's amazing how that happened before it was viral.

Yeah, pretty cool. Yeah, I know. I'm a sci-fi fan too, so I totally get it. Well, Theo, thank you so much for joining us today. It's been a real pleasure talking to you.

Thank you, Doug. I appreciate it.

Doug Noll here. Thank you so much for listening to Listening with Leaders. If you are a successful executive leader who would like to be on this program, please visit podcast. Doug Noll, DougNoll.com/podcast. If you got something out of this interview, would you please share this episode on social media? Just do a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend or post it on the socials. If you know someone that would be a great guest, tag them on the social media to let them know about the show and include the hashtag #ListeningWithLeaders.

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