Meet the Student Founder Determined to Help Minorities in Healthcare

UCLA senior Aneri Patel has been on a mission to provide minorities with a better way to find physicians. I had the chance to talk to her about her experience being a founder today:

Q: What drove you to start Empower Health?

A: The reason I wanted to create this company is because in high school I had an undiagnosed health condition that resulted in me going to 16 doctors in the span of a year. After having some bad experiences with doctors telling me that I was making up my symptoms, I learned that medical gaslighting was a known problem specifically affecting women of color. One in five women have had their health conditions dismissed by their physician resulting in worse health outcomes, increased healthcare costs, and additional mental trauma as a result of not being believed.

From all of those experiences, I decided to create Empower Health which is a website where minorities can leave reviews of their physicians, and people can find doctors that others in their same community also like. These communities could be women, immigrants, LGBTQ+, people who speak certain languages, and more. Our users will be able to find physicians that they love and are culturally aware of any issues that may impact their health.

Q: What stage is Empower Health in currently?

A: We are currently pre-everything hahaha. We will have the MVP ready in a month and will roll out our first beta testing with pregnant/new mothers in the LA-Area. They will be rating their OBGYNs. Women of color that are pregnant are our beachhead market because patients see their OBGYNs many times, not just once, and it’s a very relationship-driven industry. We hope this will make the patients feel more comfortable with giving reviews. More notably, OB-GYN databases are largely incomplete on our other competitors’ websites. Reproductive health is also the most frequently cited specialty in which women experience bias due to socioeconomic and cultural gaps.

Q: What’s one aspect of Empower that excites you?

A: One thing that excites me is the fact that we’re built for what the healthcare landscape looks like today. A lot of these other companies were founded in the 2000’s back when telehealth didn’t really exist, so the telehealth option is built into the platform itself.

Q: How has being a student founder helped your experience?

A: I think being a student has helped me a lot. I’ve been able to lean on my network, friends, and mentors that I’ve met here at UCLA who have all been really helpful. Also, since I’m graduating in December, I will have around 7 months to work full time on Empower Health to continue working on the product, do more testing, and hopefully see it grow into a viable company!

Empower Health is currently in stealth mode, but if you want to follow them and learn more as they release information, click these links!

Instagram: @empower.health.us

Empower Health Linktree: https://linktr.ee/empower_health

Aneri’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anerinpatel/