Welcome our Co-Founder Raju Joshi : Transforming the AgeTech Industry and Advancing the Dialogue on SDOH
At Cogensus, our mission is to alleviate loneliness, extend community, empower care, and preserve legacy to address social determinants of health (SDOH). We intend to achieve this by creating a proprietary digital health and analytics platform focused on constructs such as loneliness to provide insights into a patient’s mental health and cognition while preserving their legacy. Raju Joshi is a seasoned healthcare leader with over 30 years of experience in academic research, health system delivery, biotechnology, medical devices, digital health innovation, clinical development, clinical operations, and regulatory affairs.
Raju’s interest in Cogensus stems from personal experience through the loss of both her Mother-in-Law and Father in 2024 and the similar experiences expressed by people who had lost a parent or loved one.
We interviewed Raju to get her perspective on what about Cogensus resonated with her.
“I was particularly drawn to the unique intersection of legacy preservation and social determinants of health such as social connectedness and loneliness. In my own life experience, having lost two senior members of my family within a span of three months this year, I realized the direct impact and benefit a tool like Cogensus could have had on my Mother-in-Law and Father. Not only could it help our family through the bereavement process, but would we have made different treatment decisions as a collective care team if we had the nuanced information about their eating habits, medical history, and mental health status? How could we as caregivers have helped ourselves and their clinicians manage chronic conditions and understand end-of-life perspectives? Furthermore, how could this tool help the surviving parent address loneliness, and how can this information help future generations understand their own health risks based on their grandparents’ medical history?”
“By incorporating Cogensus into one’s ongoing life, the tool may become a communication vehicle to and for the clinician to make patient conversations with clinicians more timely, effective, and meaningful during visits. It could help the clinician decide which treatment option is best for a person based upon their social infrastructure and cultural norms at home.. Adherence to treatment affects outcomes, this we know, but which aspects of a person’s life are affecting adherence, and how much attention do we pay to this dimension of clinical care?” Raju remarked.
Through AI-powered daily conversations, patients’ sentiments, mood, symptoms, and memories can be captured. This additional information can provide contemporaneous SDOH context to treating clinicians, and this recorded information can augment standard of care assessments by providing important SDOH information to assist clinicians optimize treatment plans for patients and their families.
Raju emphasizes that Cogensus may be in a position to assist many types of patients and that taking a step-wise approach to understanding which populations, caregivers and clinicians can benefit most is important.
When asked about her experience in MedTech and healthcare, she notes that women in the MedTech and Healthcare industry have come a long way in the last 30 years and bringing more women representation into the discussion and into the co-founder circle is important.
“Men and women offer different perspectives and different approaches to doing things, and both perspectives are important. I’ve always enjoyed working with female leaders who often bring their own personal journeys to their mission. I’ve seen many posts in LinkedIn from female leaders indicating breaks in their careers to serve as caregivers to loved ones. The decision to be a caregiver can have financial, social, and career impacts. Cogensus may be able to address varying requirements caregivers have, many of whom are women. Building for diversity of thoughts, approach, and requirements ultimately leads to a better team, product and company.”
With a strong team, clear mission, and commitment to rapid evolution, Cogensus can vastly improve the AgeTech industry and improve care for diverse patients, families, caregivers, and physicians.
