I spent eight months building Veyda. Then I ended up in the ER.

For more than a week, I told myself the pain would pass. It didn't, and it forced me into the ER late one night and kept me there until we could rule out something far worse.

Had I listened to my body, I could have caught this sooner, but I didn't. Instead, it caught me.

Here's the part I can't get past: in the eight months leading up to that night, I was building Veyda, a system for people who work too much, take care of themselves too little, live between this thing and the next, and never stop, even when they should. I built it for people like me, only to miss my own warning signs in the process.

The irony isn't lost on me. It's also the clearest argument I've seen for why Veyda is long overdue.

Where we started.

Two years ago, Veyda was our plan for a luxury health club. The most extraordinary place imaginable, where your care, training, recovery, and community would live under one roof. I still believe in that place, and a version of it is still on our roadmap.

But by the middle of 2025, a bigger question emerged. How do you take that same integrated, 360-degree approach and bring it to people everywhere, meeting them where they already are? A health club, done right, serves a few hundred people in one city. Maybe a thousand. But by design, it only serves the people who can reach it. Without the proper membership, schedule, and zip code, it doesn't work. Health[care] in this country has faced barriers like these for decades, and attempting to find solutions from within them would have made us part of the problem.

So we asked ourselves bigger questions. What if the club didn't have an address? What if, instead, it lived with you, always, on your most personal device?

The answer became Veyda.

Why we started.

Today, managing your health is confusing, slow, and exhausting. And to spare ourselves the disappointment, we've stopped expecting anything different.

You shouldn't have to wait three weeks for ten minutes with someone to explain your lab results, hunt down a visit summary, and then attempt to coordinate and communicate between providers. You shouldn't have to search Google or an AI that has never seen your data for answers that may or may not apply to you. You shouldn't have to guess whether a workout is right for your body, or whether a meal is right for your bloodwork.

So much of the system's weight has been put on the people it exists to serve that any attempt to take care of ourselves feels like a fight.

Why is it this complicated?

Why can't you get answers to your questions from your own data?

Why can't reaching a provider or a specialist be as simple as texting a friend?

Why does everything live in silos, disconnected systems, and clipboards?

Why does it take weeks or even months to get an appointment for a ten-minute conversation?

Why is there endless research online, but no way to find the part that applies to you?

Why does something as valuable as our well-being have to feel so unattainable?

Why, when we think about our health, do we picture white coats, waiting rooms, insurance cards, and paperwork?

Why can't health[care] be part of how you actually live your life?

Here's the why. Health[care] isn't one system. It's dozens of them, each built to see one slice of you and to serve its own purpose, whether that's getting paid, protecting itself, or getting the next patient through the door. Nobody in that arrangement is responsible for the whole picture. So the whole picture falls to the only person who touches every piece of it. You. Untrained, unpaid, in the middle of your life, with the science changing faster than anyone can read it. That was never a job one person could do. It was never supposed to be your job at all.

Every professional who works in a care role has been handed a task no single individual can complete. In primary care, physicians now spend more time on patient records than in the visit itself: about 36 minutes of screen time for every 30-minute appointment (Rotenstein et al., 2023). Their work is tireless and commendable, and the system around them makes it harder than it has to be. Care providers are the best of us, working inside a broken structure that was never built for them, or for us.

What's changed is the tools. The most advanced reasoning systems ever built now fit in a pocket, and we've pointed them at nearly everything except the body carrying the pocket. Medicine has never lacked advanced technology. It lacked technology built for the person instead of the institutions. And the answer was never more tools for the same systems that keep failing us, or another wellness hack, or another promise that you'll live to a hundred. None of that has made us healthier as a whole.

So we took that same reasoning and built it for one purpose. Not to sell you a shortcut, a six-pack in ten weeks, or a guarantee that the pain goes away. To help you understand your own body, in plain language, from your own data. Information can be scattered, locked away, even sold. Understanding can't. Once you understand your own body, no one can take that from you. It's yours, in every appointment, every decision, every year after. People who understand their health, and aren't intimidated by it, get healthier faster. Understanding your own body is about as fundamental as it gets, and we're all better off in a world where everybody has that, not just a few.

What we built instead.

Veyda is one connected system for your health. Your records, labs, devices and apps, lifestyle, and questions, all in one place, with answers grounded in your own data and in verified sources, not in a generic search that has never met you.

It starts with a Lifelong Health Record that you own. Connect the providers you already see, and your records import automatically, without the agonizing responsibility of locating and uploading them yourself. Today, it reaches more than 50,000 providers nationwide, so your history follows you instead of getting lost behind you. Results from any lab turn convoluted, confusing files into digestible, specific-to-you numbers and signals you can easily understand. Your wearables and apps feed the same picture.

Then there's Sage, the intelligence inside Veyda. It reads everything and gives you answers the way a trusted friend would, if that friend had all the latest research in front of them and knew your history by heart. Every answer shows its sources and how closely the evidence fits your individual situation. Sage offers understanding and guidance, never a diagnosis, and it says plainly when a question belongs with a clinician. From there, it helps you walk into the appointment carrying your whole story, so those fifteen minutes actually count. Simply ask in the app, or over iMessage, and soon you'll be able to talk to Sage, because getting an answer about your own health should be as easy and as comfortable as texting or calling someone you trust.

Every part of Veyda was built encrypted and HIPAA-aligned, on one conviction. An intelligence system this personal has to be private. Your record is never for sale, never used to train models, and never shared with advertisers.

And because the whole point is that your health shouldn't depend on what you can afford, the Veyda Account is free for life.

We've written more about why health needs a different kind of AI, if you want the long version.

How we built it.

I built the technology end-to-end, over eight months, with a team around me carrying clinical operations, compliance, legal, design, marketing, and strategy. More than two thousand people joined the waitlist, and in August, we opened our private beta. Our 250 spots filled faster than we expected, and we'll open it to everyone soon. Since then, physicians, professors, and industry leaders have reached out, some because they could see it helping their patients, others to ask how they can be part of it. Early members tell us it's the first time their whole health has made sense.

To this point, Veyda has been funded largely by its cofounders, with help from a small circle of people who believed early, and every dollar has gone into the product. This was deliberate. We wanted the foundation and the rules for your data set in place before anyone else had a seat at the table. When we raise outside capital to take Veyda further, and we will, it will be on the same terms we'd want for our own families. Your most private information stays yours, and no company should have to sell it to succeed.

I'm proud of that. I'm less proud of how I got there. Nights that ended at 6 a.m. Weekends that disappeared. Invitations I stopped answering. Days when I hardly saw the sun. I told myself it was temporary, insisting my health and my life could wait, the way we all do. Then I ended up in the emergency room.

I'm sharing this story not just because it's true, but because it's the whole point. The way I built Veyda is exactly the way I don't want anyone to have to live. It's also why the first move of the next chapter is growing the team that builds it.

Who it's for.

Veyda is for people who work too much on everything except how to be "healthy," and carry even more stress knowing it. For people who are always on the go, simultaneously existing between this project and that problem. For those of us who, even after a long day, can't quite seem to relax. For the person with so many others depending on them that their own care gets overlooked. For all of us who love our family and friends but never quite get the time or energy to spend it with them. For you and me, knowing you're overdue for a checkup, until it's no longer a choice but a necessity.

In other words, Veyda is for humans. We're inconsistent, distracted, and entirely human. We are not capable of doing everything all at once without the proper tools in place. For too long, those tools didn't exist. Now they do.

Where we're going.

Admittedly, this wasn't my first wake-up call. I've told that story before, and you can read it here. This one clarified what we're building, why we're building it, and who we're building it for.

It started with the beta launch in August, and it ends when every person has the fundamentals of their health, on their own terms, in plain language, on the device already in their pocket. That future is not only attainable, but essential. Veyda won't be built with the same tactics we've watched plateau time and time again. It will take a fresh approach and a lot of determination, and we have both.

In July, we published a manifesto that said your health is coming home. This letter is what it cost to mean it.

Veyda is with you for all of life.

Jayce Simpson
Co-Founder and CEO, Veyda