Elfie Voices: Rethinking Health

Doctors know the advice: move more, eat better, take your medication, stop smoking.
But knowing what to do and actually doing it every day are two very different things.
In this episode of Elfie Voices, Dr. Moustafa joins us from a unique perspective: both as an internal medicine physician and as a patient working on his own health.
After losing 20 kilograms, becoming more consistent with his health habits and reducing his cigarette consumption, he shares why his medical knowledge alone was not what made the difference. Instead, it was small, repeatable changes, visible progress and the motivation to keep coming back.
Together, we explore why immediate rewards can help make distant health goals feel achievable, why consistency often matters more than perfection, and why healthcare must look beyond biology alone.
For pharma and healthcare organisations, his message is clear: medication may address the disease, but long-term outcomes also depend on the person taking it.
If we want to support lasting health change, behaviour, motivation and everyday patient realities need a seat at the table too.
That is what Elfie Voices is here to uncover — the human experiences that can help our healthcare industry understand patients better and support them better.

What does taking ownership of your health look like at 73?
For Maureen, it looks like asking questions, continuing to learn, understanding her numbers, staying active, travelling, volunteering — and refusing to believe that age should decide how involved someone can be in their own health.
In this episode of Elfie Voices, Maureen shares her experience of living with hypertension and diabetes for more than two decades. From receiving a diagnosis she never expected to learning more about her body and monitoring her health over time, her story raises an important question: what happens when patients are given the knowledge and confidence to participate in their care?
Because health is not one-size-fits-all. The same condition can exist within completely different lives, priorities and goals. Maureen reminds us why health education should be accessible at every age — and why the strongest health journeys are built through collaboration between informed patients and their healthcare teams.
For the healthcare industry, her story carries an equally important message: to help patients better, we first have to listen to them better.
That is what Elfie Voices is about — bringing the experiences of our community into the light so healthcare organisations can better understand the people behind the conditions they support.
And as Maureen puts it: it is never too late.
This episode shares Maureen’s personal experience and is not medical advice. Treatment and medication decisions should always be discussed with a qualified healthcare professional.

What happens when someone who spent 18 years inside big pharma crosses over to a fast-moving health-tech startup?

In this episode of Elfie Voices: Rethinking Health, Grace McNamara sits down with Daniela "Dani" Acioli, joining us from Rio, to unpack her journey from GSK — where she led marketing, sales excellence, and digital/Martech — to the Elfie Brazil team. Dani is candid about the thing that frustrated her most in pharma: the industry invests heavily in understanding the patient journey, yet compliance, legacy technology, and slow decision-making leave a gap at the "last mile" to the patient. Elfie, she argues, is built to close exactly that gap.

Together they explore why AI is here to stay in medicine (patients no longer Google — they ask AI), how Elfie combines a science-backed foundation with AI to see the whole person instead of a single disease, and what real-world data could mean for physicians, public health, and payers. Dani also shares a deeply personal story about her father's three-year cancer journey — and the folder of printed exams he carried to every appointment — that explains why oncology is next for Elfie.

A conversation about the pharma–tech partnership, real-world data, wearables, women's health, Brazil's entrepreneurial spirit, and why, even in the age of AI, it still comes down to people.

Medication non-adherence costs Europe €125 billion and over 200,000 premature deaths every year — yet roughly half of patients still don’t take their treatment as prescribed. In this episode of Rethinking Health, Grace McNamara sits down with Emilie Cristini, one of Elfie’s first employees and now head of global pharma partnerships and country operations.

Emilie shares how Elfie grew from a single hypertension product in Brazil into a holistic, multi-morbidity health platform now operating across Southeast Asia, Africa, Turkey, Latin America and beyond. The conversation covers why non-adherence is a system failure rather than a motivation problem, the published evidence behind Elfie (including a 37% adherence increase in the Engaged study), an upcoming RCT with the European Society of Cardiology, and how AI features like face-scan blood-pressure measurement, body scans and nutrition analysis are reshaping the patient journey.

They also dig into the realities of clinician trust, data privacy, the EU AI Act, and why it still takes 17 years for best practice to become standard practice in healthcare — plus a look ahead at Elfie Care for doctors, WhatsApp-based health AI, and new Ministry of Health partnerships.

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The future of healthcare won’t be won in the lab alone — it will be won at the patient’s side. Beyond the Pill, hosted by Grace McNamara, goes inside the shift transforming pharma and digital health: how companies move past the product to deliver real outcomes through adherence, patient engagement, and technology that meets people where they already are.

Each episode brings on the leaders making it happen — pharma executives, clinicians, founders, and changemakers — for candid conversations on market access, AI in the clinic, emerging-market growth, and the human side of digital transformation. Practical, forward-looking, and grounded in what actually works, Beyond the Pill is for anyone building the next era of patient care.

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What does it take for a government to put its name behind an AI health platform? In this episode of Elfie Voices: Rethinking Health, Grace McNamara sits down with Elfie co-founders Ofir and JF to unpack a landmark moment: their first Memorandum of Understanding with a government to deploy ELFIECARE across doctors and hospitals — free of charge.

After five years proving the hardest thing in digital health — patient engagement — Elfie’s data surfaced a defining insight: the doctor is the single biggest agent of change, with doctor-referred patients showing double the adherence and double the impact. That insight reshaped the company’s next move: empowering clinicians with conversational AI that plugs into existing workflows on WhatsApp, never replacing the systems already in place.

Ofir and JF lay out the economics that make Ministries of Health pay attention — exploding chronic-disease costs, the urgent need to “scale the doctor,” and a model that delivers controlled, compliant AI with local data residency in markets the big cloud providers don’t even serve. They explain why Elfie’s moat is the difficult path most vendors avoid: free deployment, ministry authorization, demonstrated medical impact, and a real-time epidemiologic data layer that finally lets governments and pharma see whether their spending actually works.

For leaders in government and pharma, this is a candid look at how to align short-term incentives toward long-term population health — and how rigorous AI governance

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Venous disease doesn’t have to be just a cosmetic concern—it's a hidden indicator of broader cardiovascular health that’s often overlooked. Why are we failing to measure and prioritize venous health at the system level—and what’s at stake if we don’t change? In this eye-opening episode, Dr. Vito Ademe, an interventional vascular cardiologist and passionate phlebologist, reveals how under-measurement and under-recording of venous disease leave millions at risk of costly, preventable complications.
You’ll discover how venous disease is more prevalent than many realize and how it silently contributes to heart failure, strokes, and systemic inflammation. Dr. Vito breaks down the critical link between venous health and cardiovascular risk, emphasizing the importance of systemic measurement and early detection. Learn about groundbreaking concepts like “wellness phlebology,” where understanding the root causes of venous issues can prevent systemic health decline long before crises occur.

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What if the biggest threat to your blockbuster isn't a competing molecule — but the patient who quietly stops refilling after month two?

In this episode, Grace McNamara sits down with Mohamed El-Zayat, Elfie's new Country Manager for Egypt and the Middle East and a 22-year pharma veteran (Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Merck) across marketing, global brand leadership, and patient access. Mohamed breaks down the three hidden competitors every chronic-disease brand faces — therapy dropout, the shrinking HCP-patient consult, and the post-prescription data blackout — and explains why a connected patient ecosystem, not another standalone app, is the strategic unlock.

Inside the conversation:

• Why adherence, not rival brands, is the real battleground in chronic care

• How Elfie Care is positioned to be "the most significant launch in healthcare in the next 10 years"

• Why longitudinal, patient-reported + wearable + lab data is pharma's next real-world evidence goldmine

• The economics of replacing 65 fragmented PSP apps with one ecosystem spanning pharma, payers, ministries, HCPs, and pharmacies

• What insurers, ministries of health, and brand teams should be asking now

A sharp, strategic listen for pharma executives, patient access leaders, RWE teams, and payer innovators.

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Most health systems overlook one of the most impactful, cost-effective tools in chronic disease: food. What if nutrition was not just lifestyle advice, but a direct, measurable clinical intervention?

In this episode of Elfie Voices, Aya speaks with Débora Gapanowicz, a dietitian specialising in diabetes and functional nutrition, about rethinking the role of food in population health. Débora explains how everyday dietary choices can shape cardiometabolic biomarkers in real time, from blood glucose to blood pressure, highlighting nutrition as a powerful but often underused part of care.

The conversation explores why nutrition has historically sat outside clinical practice, how digital platforms like Elfie are helping make it more measurable, and what the economic case looks like for integrating it more formally into healthcare systems.

A thoughtful shift in perspective, with real implications for prevention, cost, and long-term outcomes.

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Elfie is bringing its full AI-powered chronic disease management platform to WhatsApp. Medication tracking, nutrition analysis, lab results, and real-time health coaching — all inside a conversation on the chat interface 2 billion people already use every day. No app download. No training. No storage barrier.

In this episode of ElfieVoices: Rethinking Health, co-founders JF and Ofir join Grace to walk through what's coming and why it matters. For pharma: proactive adherence nudges that meet patients where they already are, replacing the compliance behaviors they can't sustain. 

For insurers: an AI engine that plugs into existing member apps without new infrastructure. For patients everywhere: a health coach available 24/7 in the chat they already use daily.

They also take on the security question head-on — why WhatsApp's Business API actually reduces vulnerability points, stores zero patient data, and delivers end-to-end encryption most health apps can't match.

Launching this summer.