S2E13 Relentless Empathy & Going Deep On Understanding The Problem | Ryan Eder
Ryan Eder, Founder and CEO of Include Health, explains how his senior thesis project, the Access Strength Machine, evolved into a hardware-agnostic digital health platform. He details his process of 'relentless empathy,' which involved renting a wheelchair and visiting gyms to understand the barriers faced by disabled users, leading to a gold-winning design. Eder describes the transition from a proprietary physical machine to an IoT sensor system that digitizes existing fitness equipment, addressing both physical and administrative barriers in healthcare. The episode highlights the challenges of integrating software into clinical workflows and the strategic decision to make the technology compatible with third-party hardware to scale impact.