Our story
Because of our personal experiences,
we know how much patients and caregivers have to contribute.
A Letter From Our Founders
We founded Folia Health because it has been simply too hard for our family members to receive personalized, data-driven healthcare that directly addresses the issues they're dealing with. People around the country and now the world, including our own team members and families, use Folia to track what they're experiencing—fatigue, symptom flares, pain—alongside what they're currently doing for treatment, and then use this information to understand the best way forward. Most Folia users also receive Data Dividends to share their data as part of our Research Programs, the business model that keeps Folia humming along.
Along the journey of building Folia, we’ve developed and validated a new type of health data—home-reported outcomes (or HROs). HROs allow people dealing with complex conditions to digitize their vast personal health knowledge, with simple responses to a personalized set of multiple-choice questions whenever they’re experiencing a change in their health. HROs are actually now a valued part of the research methods that leading life sciences companies use to understand how their therapies are impacting people in the real world.
Nell and Dan
Co-founders of Folia Health
Nell Meosky Luo: Founder & CEO
My younger brother has CVID, an immunodeficiency. Over the course of 20+ years, my mom has accumulated a wealth of knowledge about his condition.
Our family’s journey with health care inspired me to study public health. During my studies, I saw how clinicians and researchers still struggle to understand how treatments work for different groups of patients. The promise of personalized medicine is not yet realized.
Eventually, I recognized that the data I was looking for did exist – it was just in my mom’s head and within her many, many notebooks.
Dan Toffling: Co-Founder & CTO
As the father of a child with Down Syndrome, I was drawn to the idea of improving care quality by empowering patients and families.
After years working in the agency and e-commerce world, I was looking for an opportunity to work on something meaningful. Nell put out an ad for a co-founder with a technical background and a first-hand understanding of managing a chronic condition.
We’re well on our way to revolutionizing diagnostics, clinical care, self-management, and clinical research.
Beginning in 2016, we’ve developed a way to capture the valuable insights of patients and caregivers, and make them accessible to thought-leaders and researchers developing novel therapies and improving the standard of care. We’ve won numerous awards, have been featured on podcasts and in the news, and were even chosen to be one of two startup representatives to Governor Charlie Baker’s Massachusetts Digital Health Council. Recently, we’ve been working with the Massachusetts General - Brigham COVID-19 Task Force to apply our work to local and national coronavirus response efforts.
