A Singapore-born company is betting that better diagnostics can help regular people optimize their health before problems start.
Most of us get our blood tested once a year, if we're lucky. A doctor glances at a handful of numbers, declares everything "normal," and sends us on our way. Kenneth Lou thinks this approach is fundamentally broken.
Lou, who previously built a popular personal finance app called Seedly, has spent the last two years working on a different problem: what if we could catch health issues before they become actual problems? His company, Mito Health, is trying to bring the kind of comprehensive health monitoring that's usually reserved for executives and celebrities to anyone willing to spend $399.
The idea sounds simple enough. You order a test online, get your blood drawn at a local lab, and receive an analysis of over 100 biomarkers—about twice what most annual checkups cover. But where Mito gets interesting is what happens next: AI processes your results, a doctor reviews them, and a health coach walks you through personalized recommendations.
From Finance to Longevity
The founding team reflects an unusual mix of backgrounds. Lou and his co-founder Tee-Ming Chew know how to build consumer products that people actually use—Seedly became one of Singapore's most popular fintech apps. They've partnered with Joel Kek, who helped build Singapore's COVID contact tracing system, and Dr. Ryan Ware, a surgeon who left hospital medicine to focus on preventive care.
"We realized that most people only engage with healthcare when something's already wrong," Lou explains. "But by then, you've missed years of opportunities to optimize."
The team raised $4 million from Y Combinator and notable angels including Balaji Srinivasan and Nir Eyal. After launching in Singapore, they've expanded to all 50 U.S. states, tapping into America's growing appetite for direct-to-consumer health services.
More Than Just Numbers
What sets Mito apart from other direct-to-consumer testing companies isn't just the breadth of biomarkers they analyze, but how they present the information. Instead of overwhelming users with medical jargon, their platform translates results into actionable insights.
Take their "biological age" calculation, which uses blood markers to estimate how fast your body is actually aging compared to your chronological age. It's not just a vanity metric the underlying data points to specific areas where lifestyle changes could make a real difference.
Nir Eyal, author of "Hooked," has been using Mito's service and particularly likes the dashboard for tracking biomarkers over time. "I can upload my old lab reports and see long-term trends," he says. "It's like having a health data analyst who actually explains what everything means."
The company is also beta testing MitoMD, a chatbot that helps users interpret their results in plain English. Think of it as having a medically-trained friend who can explain why your vitamin D levels matter and what you should actually do about them.
Building a Health Ecosystem
Mito doesn't stop at blood work. They've partnered with BodySpec for DEXA scans to measure body composition and with Prenuvo for full-body MRI screenings. These add-ons transform what could be a one-off test into something more like a comprehensive health audit.
The approach appeals to several different types of users. There are the biohacking enthusiasts who want to optimize everything, busy professionals who value convenience, and people with family histories of disease who want to catch problems early. Surprisingly, Mito has also found success with people buying tests as gifts for family members.
Unlike some competitors who lock users into monthly subscriptions, Mito operates on a one-time payment model. You buy a test when you want one, avoiding the subscription fatigue that plagues so many health services.
The Bigger Picture
The real question is whether Mito can turn preventive health monitoring into a mainstream behavior. Right now, most people only think about their health when something goes wrong. Changing that mindset and proving the value of early intervention is a much bigger challenge than just analyzing blood samples.
But if they succeed, the implications go beyond individual health outcomes. Corporate wellness programs, insurance companies, and healthcare systems are all watching to see if proactive health management can actually reduce long-term costs.
Mito is part of a broader shift toward treating health as something to optimize rather than just maintain. Whether that becomes the new normal depends on companies like theirs proving that better data actually leads to better outcomes.
For now, they're focused on making comprehensive health monitoring accessible to people who couldn't afford it before. If the early results are any indication, there's significant demand for that kind of service.
The next challenge will be proving that knowing more about your health actually helps you live better and longer.
