At-home diagnosis: why Remi sends a doctor, not a kit

At Remi, a doctor who comes to your home does the diagnosis, not a kit. At-home kits aren't accepted as a diagnosis. For the patient, the visit is free.

Remi is a monthly membership in Mexico for people with diabetes, high blood pressure, or weight issues. It includes an AI companion on WhatsApp, doctors and specialists, medication delivered to your door, and connected devices.

It all starts with the diagnosis. And I designed that first piece wrong.

The original plan: an at-home kit

I wanted Remi to be self-serve end to end. A kit shows up, you take the test, and with that result you join the membership. No appointments. No leaving home.

I liked it because it scales. A kit is cheap, it ships by courier, and it doesn't depend on how many doctors you have that day.

What an IMSS consultant and a doctor told me

Before building anything, I sat down with two people.

An IMSS consultant helped me with the business model. A doctor helped me understand the problem and how to diagnose properly, in the simplest way possible.

That's where the kit fell apart.

Tests you take yourself at home aren't accepted as a diagnostic procedure. They give you an idea. But they don't have the precision to tell someone "you have diabetes" and start treating them.

And if the diagnosis isn't valid, everything else falls apart: the doctor, the medication, and the follow-up.

The decision: a doctor who comes to your home

I replaced the kit with a doctor who goes to the patient's home and makes the diagnosis there.

For the patient, the visit is free.

I kept what I liked about self-serve. You don't have to go to a clinic, book a hospital appointment, or ask for time off work. The doctor comes to you.

How a free visit gets paid for

The visit does cost me. I recover it when the person subscribes: the cost is amortized within the membership.

If the doctor diagnoses diabetes, high blood pressure, or weight issues, the person goes straight into the membership. There's no step in between.

So the diagnosis is also the front door. The person has already met a Remi doctor, already knows what they have, and can start that same day.

Where Remi is today

The core architecture is in place: how the business and operations work. At-home diagnosis is one of the pieces that's locked in.

I'm also putting together the Medical Board. A doctor friend at ABC is introducing me to really good physicians in four specialties:

• Diabetology and endocrinology
• Nutrition
• Cardiology
• Internal medicine

The memberships and their pricing still need to be defined. That's what determines how long it takes for each visit to pay for itself.

My takeaway

In healthcare, before you design anything, ask what counts as valid.

I built the flow around what scales. A doctor knocked it down in one conversation. Better then than with patients.