Episode 15: Kendall Lockhart – Founder and CEO – Paying Attention to Your Customer, Integrative Health, and How to Achieve Patient Behavior Change

Season 2

Apr 21

Summary

In this episode, our guest is Kendall Lockhart, Founder and CEO of MeU Care.

Lockhart shares the importance of paying attention to your customer, his fascinating background with Disney and yoga, his passion for integrative health, the importance of community for behavior change, and the intersection of A.I. and human-enabled care.

Listeners will love Lockhart’s interesting career journey and insight on how to achieve successful patient outcomes.

Show Notes

Paying Attention to Your Customer

Lockhart is the founder and CEO of MeU Care, a HIPPA secure virtual care platform that aims to solve two distinct problems in healthcare today: 1) the overarching experience of confusion, and 2) the inability to easily share information. Based in Orange County, CA, the company has built an integrative communication platform that connects the patient with both their hospital care team and their family caregivers.

Lockhart describes the approach of MeU Care as both evolutionary and revolutionary. While it utilizes advanced communication technology, it was born from the practice of simply paying attention to the customer’s actions and desires. In this case, Lockhart noticed that patients are most likely to listen to their own family caregivers regarding their health. He references a study by the Pew Research Center that reports the climbing rates of technology adoption among seniors, which makes MeU a valuable tool for aging adults.

Disney, Yoga, and Integrative Health

Before founding MeU Health, Lockhart served as the Vice President and Worldwide Head of Creative Product Development for The Walt Disney Company’s interactive media division. In this demanding role, physical fitness became a great way for Lockhart to manage stress. At the same time, his work in filmmaking and interactive media sparked an interest in Integrative Health. This approach views the entire person through a 360-degree lens and considers the well-being of the body, mind, and spirit.

While exploring this new perspective on health and fitness, Lockhart began practicing yoga – which was a much different form of exercise than he was previously used to. Instead of understanding fitness as a way to constantly improve himself, Kendall discovered that yoga encourages a continual acceptance of one’s body and the aim is to establish a mind-body connection that replaces judgment. King references the popular book The Body Keeps the Score, which takes a deeper look at the intersection between the mind, body, and brain and how a whole-body approach can lead to deeper healing.

The Importance of Community for Behavior Change

After working for Disney, Lockhart began leading a company called OneBody, Inc. In this role, he learned that while consumers are not particularly good at self-managing their own health, they are much more willing to care for someone they love. Lockhart discusses why family caregivers are an important lever for patient behavior change and how self-management along with assistance and support is key to successful health outcomes.

Lockhart shares about the changing landscape of healthcare that attempts to bring solutions closer to the consumer, which leads to healthier patients and happier health plans. He also discusses the increasing locality of pharmacists and how they are becoming among the top most trusted professions.

The Intersection of A.I. and Human-Enabled Care

Lockhart believes in the need for technology and human-enabled care to work together to bring improved health outcomes. People operate out of love and trust, and regardless of how technology advances in the coming years, this reality will not change. King references a podcast with sociologist Sherry Turkle where she discusses how machines lack the ability to empathize.

MeU is rolling out a new initiative that is aimed at a population group for whom they have a distinct passion: U.S. Veterans. They will be using a mentorship model to support the physical, emotional, and mental health of these patients.

Lockhart also shares how MeU drives engagement in their customers, which are largely health systems and health plans. Firstly, they ensure a repeatable use case of their product. In addition, they mandate their customers to utilize their product by integrating it into their existing workflow.

Lockhart ends the conversation with an important takeaway: to improve the lives of patients, health companies must learn to view the patient as their customer by observing their behaviors.

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