By Ethan M. Stone
Holistic medicine has grown more popular in recent years as people are recognising the potential benefits of whole-person care. Holistic treatments come in many different forms, with Healthnix focusing on the concept of highly personalised food as medicine.
Co-founded by Polish-British entrepreneurs Maja Mazur and Karol Waluszewski, Healthnix was created to improve chronic pain care through precision nutrition and AI-driven whole-person care techniques.
These techniques merge behavioural support, digital technology, and advanced scientific knowledge to empower healthcare providers and patients, helping them understand and address pain triggers by implementing personalised nutrition programmes and breaking new ground in the “food-as-medicine” movement.
A Stellar Start For An Important Mission
Sources of chronic pain, such as arthritis, back pain, and headaches, are unfortunately quite common and yet notoriously difficult to diagnose and treat. Many medical professionals employ conventional treatments like pain-relieving medications to manage these symptoms, but these solutions don’t work for every patient. Maja and Karol co-founded Healthnix to help patients and healthcare professionals approach this issue from a new perspective: food as medicine.
Whilst Maja leverages her background in product management and law to forge critical partnerships for Healthnix (the NHS, Imperial College London, leaders from Cleveland Clinic and Mass General Brigham), Karol uses his years of experience as an analytics lead at Amazon to ensure smooth operations and multi-site launches of the Healthnix offering across the U.S..
Under their joint leadership, Healthnix already completed two NHSpilots focused on food as medicine in primary care for osteoarthritis (OA) and got accepted into AARP’s AgeTech Accelerator after presenting at Nashville’s Vive Conference. Having graduated from theNYC’s ERA accelerator, they quickly expanded in the U.S. market.
Healthnix has had a strong Q4: Maja has recently announced a partnership between Healthnix and aivid Health, an Austin based digital healthcare analytics provider. Maja led the development and formalisation of that partnership jointly with aivid Health’s CEO, Hector Torres.
Using her expertise she directed the strategy around how data-driven nutritional interventions designed by Healthnix fit into population health and chronic care management workflows and reimbursement pathways managed by aivid Health for their Texas-based FQHC partners.
In his role as the Chief Operating Officer, Karol has taken Healthnix to the first crucial stage of employee-facing reimbursement, Healthnix has just announced being HSA/FSA eligible. This critical project led from start to finish by Karol is essential to unlocking wide-ranging access to Healthnix across the U.S..
As the company advances commercialisation and clinical collaboration tracks simultaneously, Maja continues to lead a collaboration with the Cleveland Clinic’s directorsDr. Sara Davin who is supporting the development of a highly comprehensive whole-person care and food-as-medicine programme that puts patients first.
Qualifications And Methodology
Healthnix uses AI to devise precise nutrition plans for chronic pain and patients with multiple conditions through over 140 easily digestible lessons on the connections between food and vital components of the human being, including emotions, pain, the brain, and the gut
These lessons are designed to give patients the agency they need to identify their unique pain triggers and how they may relate to their nutritional habits. Recognising that identification of harmful foods alone cannot address long-term issues like chronic pain, Maja also advocates for the inclusion of personalised and comprehensive behavioural support programmes, including access to properly trained registered dietitians, that assist patients with proper programme implementation.
Maja’s work and thought leadership has been instrumental in helping the food-as-medicine movement gain legitimate recognition and attention, subsequently making the movement more accessible to a wider range of patients.
To facilitate this legitimacy, Maja has taken part in many events and research efforts supporting the notion of food as medicine. For instance, one of her earlier works includes co-authoring a research paper with Imperial College London that describes the barriers to nutrition for osteoarthritis management.
Maja is also a prolific speaker, having been invited to speak at leading events like the Personalised Arthroplasty Society Conference, the Austin Technology Group, the Texas Physical Therapy Association Annual Conference, and the OA Action Alliance, one of the largest U.S. non-profits.
A Future of Serving Data-Driven, Dynamic Solutions
Given how successful Healthnix has been in earning support during the early stages of its development, Maja and Karol are confident of the bright future of the company and the positive impact it will have in addressing chronic pain and chronic disease management.
As the field of precision nutrition evolves, the founders of Healthnix are excited to lead the advancements around AI-driven food as medicine for chronic pain and multi-condition patients. Their shared mission is to make clinical, personalised nutrition the standard of care in chronic pain management.
Their timing could not be better, with 60 million Americans suffering from chronic pain and the government recognising the role of nutrition in managing chronic disease and pain through the newly announced MAHA Elevate programme or the Senate Bill 25 in Texas, the time is now for Healthnix to transform this space.
