The following interview is a conversation we had with Torben Nielsen, CEO of Uptiv Health, on our podcast Category Visionaries. You can view the full episode here: $7.5M Raised to Build the Future of Infusion Therapy Through Technology-Enabled Retail Centers
Brett
Welcome to Category Visionaries, the show dedicated to exploring exciting visions for the future from the founders who are on the front lines building it. In each episode, we’ll speak with a visionary Founder who’s building a new category or reimagining an existing one. We’ll learn about the problem they solve, how their technology works, and unpack their vision for the future. I’m your host, Brett Stapper, CEO of Front Lines Media. Now let’s dive right into today’s episode.
Brett
Hey, everyone, and welcome back to Categoric Visionaries. Today we’re speaking with Torben Nielsen, CEO and Co-Founder of Uptiv Health technology company that’s raised 7.5 million in funding. Torben, how are you?
Torben Nielsen
I’m doing well, how are you?
Brett
I’m doing great. Super excited for this conversation. So I know we’re going to be talking all about healthcare technology today and bringing healthcare technology to market, but I want to take a step back and go into your career and where you started. I understand that you started at Lego, which is one of my favorite companies. So tell us about your time at lego.
Torben Nielsen
Yeah, I started my career at Lego because it’s a Danish company and I’m Danish and it really was an amazing company. If I had my choice, I would go back and work for them any day. It’s a very creative company to work for and they pay attention to consumer needs like nobody else. It’s incredible that they’re even around in today’s world. Right. Where most kids operate in a digital world. But Lego has never done better. They’re really good at paying attention to what kids want and find latent needs. And that education in consumerism and what good branding means is something that I’ve been able to take with me throughout my career, particularly in healthcare.
Brett
What was it about healthcare? How do you make that jump from Lego to healthcare?
Torben Nielsen
Yeah, so I actually was recruited into healthcare, so I think in some ways healthcare found me. I was working at Xerox at the time on some of their websites and e commerce sites. And one of the payers out here can be a Health Solutions wanted to create a new initiative, really focusing on members and trying to figure out how do we be more relevant as a payer for the members that we serve. And so they hired a bunch of what they call, I think, renegades from outside of the industry that would break some glass that would think differently about what services can we provide a member of a payer in the 21st century. And remember, this is way back in 2006.
Torben Nielsen
So the Internet was just starting to really become prevalent and people are starting to realize and companies starting to realize how do we actually utilize the Internet to build closer relationships to the users that we have? And that’s what I was hired in to help do.
Brett
And then from there I believe you did a spin out, right? And you founded your first company.
Torben Nielsen
Yeah, that’s right. So at Cambia Health Solutions over the next five years, we thought about what services can we provide to members of this health plan. And we decided to focus on the provider directory. Because when you have insurance, one of the most important things is whether or not your provider is in network. And then you always think, what is it going to cost me to see that particular provider? And so we created a integrated provider directory with a price transparency functionality so that you as a member of this particular health plan could see your out of pocket costs for seeing Dr. A versus Dr. B or Hospital A versus Hospital B. And it would allow you as a member to act more as a consumer with pricing in mind. Right.
Torben Nielsen
With quality in mind as you start looking for your next provider or your next hospital that you want to go to. And that’s really important because health care has always been very opaque. Right. Health care is probably the only industry, I think, where you don’t know what it’s going to cost you until 60 days after. Right. It’s incredible that we as consumers don’t ask for that information upfront. And that’s what we said. We can actually provide some of that data or some of that information by utilizing the data that health plan is sitting on. So in five years time, we created this really unique solution that I started feeling there’s a commercial opportunity for this. Let me see if management is willing to spin us off and actually commercialize it so that we can start selling it to other payers across the U.S.
Torben Nielsen
And so in 2012, we created a business case, went to management, we pitched it and we got a pot of money. And I took 11 people with me, co founded HealthSpark and then we started selling this price transparency solution software as a service into other health plans across the nation. And over the next four or five years, we just saw tremendous growth.
Brett
I see that company got acquired in 2021. What did you learn from that entire experience here? What was like one of the biggest takeaways? Obviously I’m sure you learned a lot, but the big number one takeaway, what comes to mind?
Torben Nielsen
I think early on were hiring left and right and growing so fast.
Brett
Right.
Torben Nielsen
So the 11 people became quickly, you know, a hundred people. We landed as number 196 on the Inc. 5000 list. We’re the second fastest growing digital healthcare company in 2016. And managing that growth, I think was one of the key learnings I had. Because when you start with 11 or even 20, right? As we started hiring early on, you still had a really good sense of what is the culture, what is true north, you know, where do we want to go?
Torben Nielsen
But as you start quickly getting from 20 to 50 to 70 to 100, all of a sudden that base of core people that know the culture of why you do certain things is getting smaller and so over communicating and making sure that everybody is with you as you hire new people and they understand, you know, what true north is and why you do certain things. What your philosophy is, I think was a major learning for me.
Brett
Then let’s talk about everything that you’re building today. So at a high level, what problem are you solving?
Torben Nielsen
Yeah. So Uptift Health is focusing on the infusion market. We are transforming the infusion market. So today most infusion happens in hospital settings. The problem with that is nobody wants to go to a hospital, right? It’s very hard to find parking. It’s hard to find the building where you’re going to get the infusion. Once you find the building, maybe it’s up on the third floor. Once you get to that third floor, then it tends to be an open room where chairs are just lined up in a row, where you almost take a number, you take a seat and then you get your infusion over the next couple of hours. There’s absolutely no privacy. It’s a sterile and cold environment. It’s very noisy. When the nurse is asking you for your medical history, basically 20 other patients around you will hear it.
Torben Nielsen
And it’s very hard. If you have a question afterwards, you’re at home now, right? You want to know if you can eat or you’re not feeling so well. Who do you actually call, right? Who do you talk to? It’s hard to find that nurse that took care of you in that hospital setting. It’s also the most expensive place where you can get infusion. So we see an opportunity in the market to move it out of the hospital setting into a retail based setting close to where people live and work in strip malls, right next to a Starbucks, right next to a Cordoba. You park right outside, you walk five me in our centers, right? You get a private suite, flat screen tv, WI fi enabled services, snacks and drinks, recliners, Dimmed lights. It’s all about you, for your care.
Torben Nielsen
And we do it for anywhere between 40 to 70% less of what a hospital setting is. That’s the problem that we are solving.
Brett
How do hospitals feel about you? Do they hate you?
Torben Nielsen
Hospitals, I think, feel that they have a lot of capacity issues right now. There’s a lot of new therapies coming to market. We all grow older as a population. Right. We are getting better at diagnosing some of these chronic conditions. And so hospitals are starting to see capacity issues. And that’s where a retail based infusion provider like us could come in and be either a partner with a hospital in terms of overflow, we could potentially, you know, help them stand up some of these retail based centers. Because even hospitals realize that the current model that they have may not work over the next five or ten years.
Brett
So who’s the end customer then? Is it the patients themselves? Is it the insurance company, like, who’s giving you money?
Torben Nielsen
Yeah. So we have contracts with all the insurance companies in our market and we have two infusion centers today in Detroit, Michigan. We have contracts with all the Michigan insurance plans and all the nationals. And then we work very closely with the specialists that treat these conditions. So the patient groups that we take care of are Ms. Patients, rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn’s and colitis, some severe asthma, allergy patients, some, you know, eye diseases now can utilize infusion as well to cure those eye diseases. So we work with those specialists, we knock on their doors, we introduce them to this Uptiv health model and saying there’s a different way of treating infusion. It can happen in a retail based environment and if we adding technology on top of it, which is truly a differentiator on the market today, all our patients have a patient app.
Torben Nielsen
That’s where they start their journey. They set up their profile, they take a picture of their insurance card, they can communicate with the care team even before they come in via secure sms. Via the app, they can even get on a video consultation like this with our nurses to prepare for their infusion. We also have our patients go through a small questionnaire where they can let us know how they want their infusion. So would they like one blanket with their infusion? Would they like an extra blanket? Are they bringing a friend? If so, what’s their name? Would they like coffee, tea, or soda with the infusion? Would they like snacks? Would they like Hulu or Netflix on the flat screen tv? All those preferences we then equip their personalized suite with prior to them coming in.
Torben Nielsen
And, Brett, I think we talked about it, you know, right before we got online. We’ve used a human centered design approach to our centers and our processes. And so we don’t actually have a reception counter in any of our centers. We feel there are enough barriers in healthcare, we don’t need to create yet another one between us and the patient. So we’ve instructed all our nurses. They have a very choreographed playbook where they greet you at the front door and say, brett, it’s great to see you. Let me escort you into your private suite. We know it’s you because oftentimes we have your picture on the app, and if not, we know when you schedule an appointment. Right.
Torben Nielsen
And as we are escorting you into your private suite, all those personalized preferences that you filled out in the app, they sit in the suite now just ready for you.
Brett
How do you think about the ROI of creating an experience like that? If I just think back to some of the experiences that I’ve had in healthcare and really just anywhere, you know, what it seems like it happens, is that a big private equity firm will, you know, buy the organization, come in, rip out the soul. Anything that’s considered maybe like, experience and not mission critical gets ripped out and you’re left with something very dry, stale. You’re talking about, like, how do you think about the ROI of that? I’m sure it’s not cheap to have everything you just described.
Torben Nielsen
It is not. But actually, you’ll be surprised that you know, how little effort it takes, you know, to add these additional elements to it and really just think about how do we create a much better experience. The fact that we don’t have any counters is because we don’t really have a receptionist. We took some of the current operational tasks that happen in a center today, we took those and put them in the app, and we actually allowed, empowered our patients to do some of that from the comfort of their home before they come in and see us. So some of the processes that happen today as you walk into a clinic and you have the famous clipboards, right, that you need to fill out. Maybe you need to hand over your insurance card because they need to take copies of it.
Torben Nielsen
They need to know that you hear, et cetera. All those we put in the app and we gave it to the consumer that our patients to actually help us, you know, complete from the comfort of their home. So all the consent forms they usually fill out, our patients do via the app from home prior to them coming in. And they will never see those consent forms again until the year after. We have to do it on a yearly basis to stay HIPAA compliant. But all the family history, all that we can just allow you to update on a regular basis via the app. That takes away some of the costs that we typically see infusion centers. Right.
Torben Nielsen
We’ve also centralized some of the operating models so we only have one phone number and it goes to a centralized call center that take care of that. So we don’t have any phones in our centers that ring on a regular basis because that is being centralized and that saves US dollars over time. And so it’s actually a very lean experience that we have. And we’ve been in market now for a little over 12 months, maybe 14 months with our first infusion center. It’s already breaking even. It’s cash flow positive, which is great for four wall business, brick and mortar business. We know our second center is coming in even faster than that and so we think we’re onto something from an RI perspective.
Brett
What types of investors do you have? Is this traditional venture investors? As you said, four walls, brick and mortar. Is this something that it’s venture investors or is it a different profile investor?
Torben Nielsen
Yeah, it’s a good question. And actually, you know, the initial seed round was VC venture money and we closed that back in June of 23. So June of last year, we’ve now been setting up two centers. We’ve been setting up our tech stack. We also offer what we call whole person care up to 360, which is allowing us to view the patient coming in as more than just an infusion patient, but really a chronic patient going through a very complex healthcare journey. So we have certain wraparound services that we provide, such as Care management, care coordination, medication management and behavioral health talk therapy for these patients going through very hard journeys over time. As we scale our model, this model obviously becomes really interesting for PE private equity because it is truly a scale model at full scale.
Torben Nielsen
When we are at steady state for any one of our centers, those centers will return about, you know, anywhere from a mil to a mil and a half in positive cash flow. And the more centers that we have across the US to really help this chronic population, obviously the better of a economical model this is, you know, over time.
Brett
What about the marketing approach? How would you summarize the marketing approach today and how have you seen it evolve since you opened the first clinic?
Torben Nielsen
Yeah, so for us it’s been very important to have a salesperson feet on the street. Right. So we’ve had a salesperson in Detroit, Michigan, knocking on specialist doors, you know, ever since we started, actually even before we opened our first clinic. And there’s a lot of hard work that happens, you know, opening up these doors and opening up for the first referral. Our main message to these independent specialists has been we have our promise that we stand on, give us just one patient and we will show that we can deliver on that promise. And we’ve been able to really penetrate the market. And over the past, you know, 12 months, we now have over 150 unique providers refer patients into up to.
Brett
How do you think about the competitive landscape then? We touched on that a little bit. But like, who’s the number one competitor in your mind?
Torben Nielsen
Yeah, I think there’s still a lot of specialists and a lot of patients that don’t necessarily know about the retail based model that we are providing at Optiv. And so getting awareness out is really key. And so I would say hospitals still pose a threat or an opportunity to partner. Right. I think there’s some in office infusion that happens as well where providers will do some of their own infusions. Oftentimes that comes with a lot of admin work. Working with payers. Right. Having contracts with payers, having contracts with wholesalers to buy your drug, and a lot of that overhead and admin burden we can help those providers with. And so we don’t consider them key competitors. There are other ambulatory infusion centers starting to come around that do similar things to what we do.
Torben Nielsen
But the use of technology that we have and the whole person care, the wraparound services that we provide, we believe truly unique differentiators in the market.
Brett
When you reflect on the journey so far, what do you think has been the Most important, go to market decision that you’ve made.
Torben Nielsen
I think we decided very early on that it was important for us to get on contract with all the payers so we could see patients regardless of what insurance company they had. And I think that was a key decision that we made because we started on that very early. Actually, you know, six to seven months before us even opening up our first clinic, we started working with payers to get on contract. And so when we open our doors, were on contract with all the payers and we could see all patients. And that just opened up the funnel and was really important for us to start taking care of patients.
Brett
Well, I understand that you have a pretty impressive NPS score. So tell us what the score is and then most importantly, tell us how you managed to make that happen.
Torben Nielsen
Yeah, that’s right, Brett. We have an NPS score among our patients over 99. And I keep telling my team we can’t get to a hundred because it becomes completely unbelievable. That’s very high, particularly in healthcare. Our referring provider net promoter score. So the specialist that refer patients over to us is 87. So we know that we created a model that’s really well liked by our patients. But also that makes a lot of sense for the specialists. They like the fact that we take on the admin burden. We will do the prior auth, we will collect all patient information, medical information that’s needed for this infusion to take place. And the referring. A provider loves it, the patient likes it because they get in chair really fast and that’s great for the system.
Brett
Final question for you. Since we’re almost up on time, let’s zoom out three to five years into the future. What’s the big picture vision look like?
Torben Nielsen
I would love to have optiv with, you know, 50 or 60 clinics across the nation and really prove out that hybrid model of in person care and virtual care creates better outcomes for the patient and will decrease costs in the system. I think that’s exactly what we are proving out in the Detroit market and taking that playbook across the nation would be very excited and I would love to see that happen over the next five to six years.
Brett
All right, well, this has been awesome. I really enjoyed chatting with you and had a lot of fun. Before we wrap here, if there’s any founders that are listening in that want to follow along with your journey, where should we send them?
Torben Nielsen
Go to my LinkedIn profile. You know, you’re welcome to connect with me. Go follow Uptiv Health on our LinkedIn profile as well. And we’ll keep you guys updated on what’s happening.
Brett
Amazing.
Brett
Perfect.
Brett
Thank you so much. Really appreciate it.
Torben Nielsen
Thank you. It’s been fun.
Brett
This episode of Category Visionaries is brought to you by Front Lines Media, Silicon Valley’s leading podcast production studio. If you’re a B2B Founder looking for help launching and growing your own podcast, visit frontlines.io Podcast. And for the latest episode, search for Category Visioners on your podcast platform of choice. Thanks for listening, and we’ll catch you on the next episode.
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