Mochi Health was born from a simple inquiry: “Where do patients lose continuity of care, and how can they be brought back?” This question marked the beginning of Myra Ahmad’s journey as a founder. Her exploration led her to challenge the structure of healthcare itself.
Ahmad approached this question through research rather than entrepreneurship. After obtaining her MD from the University of Washington School of Medicine and engaging in research roles at MIT and UCSF, she dedicated considerable effort to understanding how obesity care is provided.
She repeatedly observed a pattern where patients with obesity were shuffled between bariatric surgeons, endocrinologists, and primary care providers, none of whom addressed the core disease. While care was available, coordination was lacking.
A System Built Around Billing Codes
Ahmad candidly diagnosed the issue, stating, “Our healthcare system is optimized for billing codes rather than clinical outcomes,” she remarked to Women of Wearables in April 2026.
“Patients move from one specialist to another, yet no one seems to take ownership of their care.” The issue lies not with the clinicians but with the misaligned incentives.
When providers are compensated based on the volume of billable interactions rather than patient improvement or continued treatment, there is no inherent motivation to maintain a long-term, accountable relationship with patients.
The complexity is that obesity rarely stands alone as a diagnosis. It often involves metabolic, hormonal, and cardiovascular concerns spanning multiple specialties.
As patients are referred from one practice to another, they risk being treated in fragments, with each visit addressing only part of the overall picture.
This leads to the dropout pattern that Ahmad has documented over the years, where patients begin treatment, lose continuity, and disengage.
Continuity As The Product
Founded in San Francisco in 2022, Mochi was established to address this disjointed care. Ahmad describes it as a three-sided marketplace that connects patients, providers, and independent pharmacies on a single platform, rather than another prescription-first telehealth service.
Patients have the freedom to select their provider and pharmacy. Clinicians operate without the constraints typically associated with the conventional system. Meanwhile, pharmacies integrate with Mochi’s software for seamless fulfillment.
The key element is the patient-provider relationship, designed for long-term continuity rather than isolated encounters.
In practice, this ensures that patients remain with the same provider as their needs evolve, with 24/7 access to their care team, which includes nutritionists and dietitians.
Ahmad refers to the model as the “discovery layer of healthcare,” a space where patients can find and remain with a trusted provider, with over 2,000 medications available at transparent prices.
She increasingly refers to the platform’s goal as creating a “primary care home”: one reliable relationship through which a patient can manage their entire health spectrum rather than piecing it together across various disconnected practices.
Interestingly, Ahmad noted that expanding beyond weight loss was not the initial intention. Patients requested that their Mochi providers handle more aspects of their care, and providers were eager to offer services beyond weight-loss treatment. Thus, the platform expanded to meet this demand.
Ahmad’s initial insight was that patients lose care in the gaps between specialists. The company’s expansion into related areas reflects, according to Ahmad, the patients’ desire to consolidate their care in one place.
Why Continuity Matters Most For Women
Ahmad emphasizes that continuity is not just an abstract ideal but a practical necessity for the patients Mochi frequently serves.
Many come for weight management while also dealing with conditions like PCOS, perimenopause, or fertility challenges—issues that are interconnected and inadequately addressed by episodic, specialist-based care.
“For women managing obesity along with additional health issues like PCOS, perimenopause, or fertility challenges, continuity of care is crucial,” she stated.
A model that allows a patient to stay with one trusted provider for all these needs, Ahmad argues, is simply what quality care for these patients should always have been.
The Data Problem Behind The Care Problem
In Ahmad’s view, bringing patients back to care also involves addressing a logistics issue. Patient information should follow them, but it often doesn’t. “Most providers are receiving lab results from different systems that don’t communicate,” she explained.
This fragmentation hinders genuinely personalized medicine, as no one reviews the complete record simultaneously.
Mochi’s approach is to unify these elements. Ahmad mentioned that the company aims to provide patients and providers with access to lab testing that directly integrates into the care plan, ensuring that labs, medications, the provider relationship, and treatment are all within a unified system.
The goal is not novelty but completeness—eliminating the gaps where a patient’s information, and consequently the patient, can be lost.
An Unfinished Thesis
It is important to acknowledge that the continuity model still faces unanswered questions. Engaging patients over the long run is challenging for any provider, whether in telehealth or traditional settings. A platform that extends into numerous conditions must also ensure quality and coordination across all areas.
While continuity is easier to plan than to ensure, Ahmad argues that Mochi doesn’t claim to have solved the problem. Instead, the conventional system makes it nearly impossible to address, and starting with continuity is a more sincere foundation.
The consistent thread from the initial question to the company that emerged is clear. Ahmad aimed to discover where patients lose continuity of care and concluded that the solution lies in the structure, with incentives that prioritize encounters over outcomes and records that fail to follow the individual they describe.
To bring patients back, she believes, means rebuilding the central relationship: one provider, one comprehensive record, and one place a patient can consistently return to.
Whether this vision can be realized remains to be seen in the coming years. However, the clarity of the thesis, from a research question to reaching half a million patients, is already documented.
