Website: www.clear.bio
Management: Piet Hein van Dam, CEO, Co-Founder
Founded Year: 2019
Headquarters: Amsterdam, Netherlands
Description: Clear measures blood glucose levels in real-time using a chip-implanted arm patch and an app.
Clear.bio: Digitizing preventive healthcare
Piet Hein is a seasoned health-tech and data entrepreneur. CEO of Clear.bio, the health-tech start-up, Piet Hein and Madelon Bracke co-founded the start-up in 2019 to offer a health program with a glucose sensor, a smart app and a real coach. In an interview, he speaks on an array of topics. Excerpts:
Conception of Clear.bio
Clear.bio was founded to help billions of people with a healthier lifestyle through the right food choices: preventively but also as support in current treatment. Observes Piet that type 2 diabetes is a lifestyle related disease, that is currently treated by a pill. “It treats the symptoms but doesn’t cure you; it’s a downward slope towards heavier medication and intense physical problems. But if it’s caused by lifestyle, can we also treat it with lifestyle? The answer is yes! Clear.bio’s precision nutrition helps you to do at home what you can do at home, to avoid being hospitalized or medicalized. App above pill.” Explains Piet that the Clear.bio app analyzes glucose levels through the sensor to detect individual responses to food. Users receive real-time personalized nutritional advice, via the app and a real coach. “They can then adjust their meals to improve blood sugar levels and prevent lifestyle-related diseases such as diabetes. More than half of the participants of the Clear.bio program now realize a significant improvement of their health within 2 weeks. However, the strength of the program lies in 100% personalized nutritional advice and an AI food recommender – both essential for a healthy lifestyle.”
Tracking personal glucometry
It has been scientifically proven that everyone reacts differently to food, which is why there is only one diet that works for you: your personal data-driven diet. The answer lies in understanding your own response to food – how your body breaks down and digests the food and drinks you consume, adds this entrepreneur. “With personal glucometry, you can track changes in your blood sugar levels after your meal. A stable blood glucose value increases your energy, reduces hunger and reduces the risk of obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Data-driven and personalized dietary advice, supported with personal guidance and step-by-step adjustments, ensure effective and sustainable changes in the diet.” Clear.bio takes these success factors as the starting point for a mobile application. In the app you log everything you eat, drink and your activity. The Clear.bio algorithm then determines the nutritional score of your meals and helps you build your own optimal nutrition plan.
Healthcare- Challenges galore
Piet suggests that digital therapeutics are the solution here, treating patients remote instead of making them come to your practice. And by supporting them when they need it (at 8 PM on a Friday night) instead of during weekdays and office hours.
Helping people make healthy food choices
Deeply rooted in medical and data science, Clear.bio knows that no single diet can be considered ‘good for all human beings’. “Precision nutrition has the future. Based on real-time glucometry, Clear.bio developed a digital self-help tool that helps type 2 diabetes patients to figure out their best diet, to adopt a healthier lifestyle and to revert their disease.” Real-time biodata monitored by a sensor, remote food coaches and a smart app provide personal diet advice and help changing behaviour.
Leadership traits
Adaptable, inclusive and a strategic activator, Piet feels that it’s not about overcoming fear, but about transcending fear. “It’s good to fail at least once because you will see that there is not so much to be fearful about; there will always be another wave to surf on. After failure, it’s good to be grateful about the simple things that you still can do like simply breathing and living on this planet where every day the sun comes up.”
“In healthcare, everybody makes a living from people being ill. Pharmaceutical companies, healthcare professionals, insurers. Most health-tech start-ups impact the area of prevention. It needs a lot of entrepreneurial risk taking, and financial risk taking, to get a prevention solution to the market. Don’t let others dis-encourage you. You’re working for a good cause. For people their health and wellbeing”, signs off Piet.