Somewhere between stepping into a full-body scanner that measures the elasticity of my veins and watching a cup used for urine samples disappear into the bathroom wall, I realized Forward is not your average doctor's office. It's like an Apple Store meets "Westworld."
Staring down a massive touch-screen monitor in the exam room, I tell Adrian Aoun, founder and CEO of Forward, that I feel like I'm inside HBO's sci-fi thriller.
"Yeah, but the good, not-creepy version, I hope," Aoun says.
Forward emerged from stealth mode on January 17 to announce the opening of its first doctor's office in San Francisco. The company offers a futuristic take on the popular concierge medical practice model, complete with state-of-the-art diagnostics tools, an artificial-intelligence system that listens and takes notes for physicians, and a pricey $149 monthly membership.
I recently toured Forward's flagship location before it opened to see what it was like.
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This is what you get when several dozen former employees of Google, Facebook, Uber, and Palantir put their heads together to reinvent the doctor's office.
About a year ago, Aoun was riding his bike to Google's offices in Menlo Park, California — where he worked on artificial intelligence and ran the special projects division at Alphabet — when he got a call.
"Don't freak out, but I'm having a heart attack," his thirty-something relative said over the sounds of sirens blaring. "I'm in an ambulance on my way to the hospital. So what do I do?"
After months of doctor appointments, phone calls with billing offices and insurance companies, and countless hours on Google trying to figure out what all the jargon meant, Aoun became frustrated by how difficult the healthcare system was to navigate.
"Doctors are kind of awesome. They're incredibly smart. They're crazy well-educated. They mean well," Aoun told Business Insider. "But the problem is, they're totally set up for failure."
"It's kind of not their fault as much as, I would actually argue, it's my fault," he said. "[If I'm] representing the engineering community, we totally dropped the ball."
His relative's near-death experience was an eye-opener, Aoun says. He set out to make the healthcare system more predictable, consistent, and convenient.
He assembled a team of some of the most brilliant minds in Silicon Valley, including one of his cofounders, Ilya Abyzov, an early Uber employee who helped launch UberX.
Founded in 2016, Forward makes over every touch point in healthcare. The company's engineers built things like diagnostics tools and a mobile app that patients use to book appointments. The technology creates a better user experience for members and their doctors, according to Aaliya Yaqub, a Forward physician and Facebook Health Center alumna.
Forward's vision has made an impression on venture capitalists. Its investors include Khosla Ventures, Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, Eric Schmidt, and Marc Benioff.
Forward's flagship location, which opened January 17, mimics the look and feel of an Apple Store. When members arrive, they sign in on an iPad at the reception desk.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider