The wife-and-husband team of physician Reneee Dua and tech entrepreneur Nick Desai have launched yet another artificial intelligence-based health care app that uses selfies to measure a patient’s vitals. 

The duo burst on the local health care scene nearly a decade ago with a doctor house-call service, Get Heal Inc., dba Heal. Then, during the pandemic in 2021, the pair launched SixD Inc. This Santa Monica-based company, doing business as Renee, has an app driven in large part by artificial intelligence algorirthms that assists customers – mostly senior citizen patients – with tasks such as medication refills and appointment scheduling.

Now, under the SixD business, Dua and Desai last month launched Together by Renee, which layers on top of the existing Renee app an AI-driven program that measures a patient’s vitals, including blood pressure, heart rate and blood oxygen levels.

Unlike traditional vitals measurement devices such as a cuff that squeezes a patient’s upper arm to measure blood pressure, this program uses smartphone camera-based selfies that patients take to measure movements and changes in the color and size of blood vessels in the face and eyes. It applies artificial intelligence algorithms to determine blood pressure, heart rate and oxygen levels. 

While this method has been studied, it’s still not in wide use. But Desai, who is SixD’s chief executive, maintains this method “is as accurate as any home-based device.”

And because it’s quick and very convenient, he said it’s more likely that seniors will use it on a regular basis.

“For customers, Together makes health care magically easy for those with chronic diseases, especially those which high blood pressure, which is a silent killer,” he said.

To fund the app’s development, Desai said the company drew on the $8.2 million it has raised to date from investors.