With a deep background in the manufacturing and innovation of medical technology, Faisal Zain has become a leading voice at the intersection of healthcare and venture capital. He focuses on how startups are leveraging technology to solve some of medicine’s most persistent challenges. Today, we delve into the strategy of beHuman, a company aiming to close the critical gap in preventative cancer screening for underserved populations. We’ll explore how its unique blend of AI automation, a virtual-first approach, and a commitment to working with insurers is creating a new model for accessible healthcare, addressing everything from building patient trust in rural areas to its ambitious plans for future expansion beyond cancer.
With your recent $4 million in funding, how will you prioritize allocation between expanding into new states like California and Texas versus enhancing your AI platform? Could you share a key metric you’ll use to measure the success of this expansion?
That’s the central strategic question, isn’t it? It’s not an either/or scenario but a carefully balanced parallel effort. The $4 million is a catalyst for a two-pronged attack. Geographic expansion into massive, diverse states like California and Texas is essential for reaching the scale needed to make a real impact on public health. At the same time, we must deepen the AI platform’s capabilities because that’s what makes the expansion scalable and efficient. Without a smarter, more automated backend, entering new markets would be prohibitively expensive and slow. As for a key metric, beyond just the number of new patients, we will be intensely focused on the “screening completion rate per thousand reached” in these new states. This tells us not just if we’re reaching people, but if our model is effective enough to guide them through the entire process, which is the ultimate measure of closing that preventative care gap.
Your model targets underserved communities, many of whom may lack a primary care physician. Can you walk me through the specific strategies you use to build trust and ensure effective follow-up care for this population when the entire process is managed virtually?
Building trust is the cornerstone of this entire endeavor, especially when you’re the first point of consistent medical contact for many of these individuals. Our strategy begins with accessibility; we aren’t a cash-based service for the affluent. By being in-network with Medicare and Medicaid, we immediately remove the most significant barrier to entry and signal that we are here for them. From there, the human touch, even virtually, is critical. The initial consultation isn’t with a bot; it’s a one-on-one video call with a clinician who listens to their history and personalizes their screening plan. This act of listening and tailoring care is a powerful trust-builder. For follow-up, our platform’s automation ensures no one falls through the cracks. We manage the scheduling, the reminders, and the delivery of results, and if a screening comes back with a concern, our care team is there to navigate the next steps, connecting them to local resources. It’s about creating a safety net where one didn’t exist before.
Your AI platform automates administrative tasks like eligibility verification and chart review. Could you elaborate on how this technology directly improves the patient journey and what specific challenges it helps your virtual care teams overcome? Please share an example.
The AI is the silent engine that makes the patient experience feel seamless and personal. For the patient, this means they don’t have to spend an hour on the phone figuring out if their insurance is accepted or trying to track down old records. For instance, our AI-powered eligibility verification happens almost instantly. A patient can go to our site, enter their information, and know within moments that their screening is covered at no cost. This removes the financial anxiety that stops so many people from even starting the process. For our virtual care teams, this automation is a game-changer. It liberates them from mountains of paperwork, allowing them to focus their time and empathy where it matters most: on the patient. Instead of manually reviewing charts for risk factors, the AI can surface key data points for the clinician ahead of the virtual visit, ensuring the conversation is targeted, efficient, and deeply personalized from the very first minute.
Unlike some cash-based competitors, you partner with insurers like Medicare and Medicaid. What were the biggest hurdles in establishing these partnerships, and how does this insurance-first model shape your approach to patient outreach and care delivery?
Getting in-network with major payers like Medicare, Medicaid, and commercial giants like Cigna and UnitedHealthcare was an immense undertaking. The biggest hurdle was proving that our virtual-first, preventative model could deliver real, measurable value and meet their rigorous standards for quality and compliance. It required a tremendous amount of work to demonstrate that we could effectively engage these hard-to-reach populations and navigate them to appropriate care, ultimately preventing the catastrophic costs of late-stage cancer treatment. This insurance-first model fundamentally shapes everything we do. It forces us to be incredibly disciplined and data-driven. Instead of broad, consumer-style marketing, our outreach is focused on communities with the highest need and lowest screening rates. It also means our care delivery must be meticulously documented and evidence-based, ensuring every patient receives a standard of care that is not just convenient but clinically robust.
Given the rising cancer rates among people under 50, how does your virtual screening model specifically address the needs and communication styles of this younger demographic? Please describe how you tailor the experience for them.
This is a deeply concerning trend, and it requires a different approach. Younger demographics are digital natives; they expect on-demand, transparent, and user-friendly experiences, and that’s precisely what a virtual-first model delivers. They don’t want to take a day off work to sit in a waiting room. The ability to schedule an appointment online and meet a clinician from their own home fits seamlessly into their lives. We tailor the experience by ensuring our platform is mobile-first and the communication is clear and direct, avoiding overly clinical jargon. We also recognize that for this group, education is key. They may not have grown up with the same public health messaging about cancer screening, so our clinicians take the time to explain the “why” behind each recommended screening, empowering them with knowledge about their hereditary risks and lifestyle factors. It’s less about authority and more about a collaborative partnership in their long-term health.
You plan to eventually expand beyond cancer into areas like cardiovascular disease and diabetes. How is your current platform being built to support this future vision, and what is the first step you’ll take to move into a new disease area?
From day one, we’ve been building the platform with a modular, disease-agnostic architecture. The core infrastructure—the AI for eligibility and scheduling, the secure virtual consultation rooms, the follow-up and care coordination engine—is designed to be a flexible chassis. The “cancer screening” component is the first application built on top of it. This means expanding into cardiovascular health or diabetes isn’t about starting from scratch. Instead, it’s about developing and plugging in new clinical protocols, risk assessment algorithms, and care pathways specific to that disease state. The first concrete step to move into a new area will be a pilot program focused on a single, high-impact screening, like A1c testing for pre-diabetes, within our existing patient population. We will leverage the trust we’ve already built to introduce this new service, allowing us to refine the clinical and operational model before a full-scale rollout.
What is your forecast for the role of AI-driven, virtual-first platforms in closing preventative care gaps over the next five years?
My forecast is that these platforms will become an indispensable pillar of our public health infrastructure. Over the next five years, we’ll see them move from being a niche solution to a mainstream strategy for health systems and payers trying to manage population health. The convergence of AI automation and virtual care creates an incredibly powerful and scalable tool to overcome the traditional barriers of cost, geography, and time. These platforms will act as a “digital front door” to preventative care, not just for cancer but for a whole spectrum of chronic diseases. They will be instrumental in shifting our healthcare system’s focus from reactive, expensive treatment to proactive, personalized prevention, making high-quality care accessible to millions who have been consistently left behind.
