Meet Mabu, the charming yellow robot with an inviting expression that represents the innovative face of healthcare technology company Catalia Health. While Mabu's appearance is friendly and approachable, the true breakthrough lies behind its large blue eyes, where cutting-edge artificial intelligence transforms patient care.
Catalia Health's advanced system integrates psychological principles, sophisticated AI algorithms, and comprehensive medical protocols to support individuals managing long-term health conditions. This combination creates an intelligent robotic companion that engages patients in meaningful daily dialogues, offering personalized health advice, medication reminders, and condition-specific education. Simultaneously, it collects and transmits valuable health data to healthcare professionals, with the flexibility to conduct these interactions through patients' mobile devices when preferred.
"Our primary mission is developing care management solutions tailored to specific health conditions," explains Cory Kidd SM '03, PhD '08, founder and CEO of Catalia Health. "A crucial component involves gathering and delivering essential information to healthcare providers. We're enabling them to expand their reach and engage with more patients more frequently than traditional care models allow."
Approximately eighteen months ago, heart failure patients began welcoming Mabu into their homes through a partnership with healthcare provider Kaiser Permanente, which covers the service costs. Since this initial implementation, Catalia Health has expanded its collaborations to include additional healthcare systems and pharmaceutical companies, extending support to patients managing various conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis and kidney cancer.
Adhering to treatment regimens for chronic diseases presents significant challenges for many patients, with numerous individuals struggling to maintain prescribed protocols. Kidd emphasizes that Mabu's daily interactions benefit not only patients but also healthcare providers, who can make more informed treatment decisions based on the comprehensive data gathered by their robotic counterparts.
The Evolution of Healthcare Robotics
Prior to pursuing his master's degree at MIT in 2001, Kidd served as both student and faculty member at Georgia Tech. His academic focus centered on addressing healthcare challenges arising from an aging population and the growing prevalence of chronic disease management.
"Traditional healthcare delivery systems cannot scale to meet current demands," Kidd observes. "This realization prompted my exploration of technologies that might help bridge this gap."
Research consistently demonstrates that in-person communication fosters greater trust, engagement, and connection compared to phone or digital interactions. During his time at MIT, Kidd conducted studies investigating whether these benefits extended to interactions with robots.
"My research revealed that when people interact with a robot capable of eye contact and sharing physical space, they experience psychological effects similar to face-to-face human interaction," Kidd notes.
As part of his doctoral work in MIT's Media Lab, within the Media Arts and Sciences program, Kidd tested this hypothesis through a randomized controlled trial with patients participating in a diabetes and weight management program at Boston University Medical Center. Some participants received a robotic weight-loss coach for home use, while others utilized a computer running identical software. The desktop robot conducted regular check-ins and provided guidance on maintaining healthy dietary and lifestyle choices. Remarkably, patients assigned to the robot group demonstrated significantly higher adherence to the weight loss program.
After completing his PhD in 2007, Kidd immediately applied his research by founding Intuitive Automata, a company focused on helping people manage diabetes through robot coaches. Despite pursuing this innovative approach, Kidd recognized that the healthcare industry, still adapting to electronic health records at the time, might not be ready for such advanced technology integration.
Although Intuitive Automata didn't achieve significant commercial success, the experience provided Kidd with invaluable insights into the healthcare sector. Through efforts to sell diabetes and weight management programs to providers, pharmaceutical companies, insurers, and patients, he developed a deep understanding of the industry's complexities.
"I established an extensive network across the healthcare landscape and gained perspective on how various stakeholders approach industry challenges," Kidd reflects. "This experience illuminated how different entities perceive their roles within the broader healthcare ecosystem."
Since that time, Kidd has witnessed dramatic reductions in robotics and computing costs. Concurrently, technologies like Amazon's Alexa and Apple's Siri have gained widespread consumer acceptance. Most importantly, healthcare industry leaders have begun recognizing technology's potential to enhance rather than replace traditional care methods.
"Traditional care delivery relies heavily on human resources," Kidd explains. "Healthcare providers typically bring patients to clinical settings, while pharmaceutical companies depend on call centers. Home visitation models represent another approach, but all these methods require substantial human capital. To double patient capacity, organizations must double their workforce—a fundamentally unsustainable model."
In response to these challenges, Kidd founded Catalia Health in summer 2014 with a mission to help patients with chronic conditions at scale.
"The potential here is incredibly exciting," Kidd says regarding the company's prospects. "Having witnessed how effectively this technology works with patients, I'm convinced of its value. Interestingly, one challenge in early studies was that patients became attached to their robots and were reluctant to return them. From my perspective, this resistance to parting with the technology serves as compelling evidence of its effectiveness."
Mabu: Building Meaningful Connections
Catalia Health employs artificial intelligence to enable Mabu to learn about each patient through personalized daily conversations, which adapt in length and content based on patient responses and engagement levels.
"Many interactions begin with 'How are you feeling today?'—similar to how a healthcare professional might initiate a conversation," Kidd describes. "From there, the dialogue can evolve in numerous directions. These exchanges often include questions that doctors or nurses would ask if they had the opportunity to speak with patients daily."
For instance, Mabu might ask heart failure patients about their current physical state, whether they're experiencing shortness of breath, and about recent weight fluctuations.
"Depending on patient responses, Mabu might suggest 'You might want to contact your doctor,' or 'I'll forward this information to your healthcare team,' or 'Let's check in again tomorrow,'" Kidd explains.
Last year, Catalia Health announced a collaboration with the American Heart Association, enabling Mabu to deliver the association's evidence-based guidelines to patients living with heart failure.
"When a patient expresses feeling unwell, Mabu might inquire whether they're experiencing symptoms commonly associated with their condition," Kidd elaborates. "We're working to determine whether issues stem from the disease itself or medication side effects. When these situations arise, we implement a dual approach: Mabu provides immediate feedback based on extensive knowledge of potential patient concerns, while simultaneously transmitting this information to the appropriate healthcare professional—whether that's a doctor, nurse, or pharmacist."
Beyond healthcare providers, Catalia also collaborates with pharmaceutical companies. In all implementations, patients incur no out-of-pocket expenses for their robotic companions. Although the data shared with pharmaceutical companies is completely anonymized, it provides valuable real-time insights into treatment effects and patient experiences.
While many of Catalia Health's partnerships remain confidential, the company recently announced a collaboration with Pfizer to evaluate Mabu's impact on patient treatment adherence and outcomes.
Looking ahead, Kidd aims to expand the company's partnerships and extend support to patients managing a broader range of conditions. Regardless of Catalia Health's growth rate, he emphasizes that service quality will remain consistent, with Mabu bringing its characteristic attentiveness and expanding knowledge to every patient interaction.
"In clinical settings, when we discuss a healthcare provider with excellent bedside manner, we're not referring to superior medical knowledge—rather, we're recognizing their ability to connect meaningfully with patients," Kidd observes. "I've studied the psychology underlying this connection—what it truly means to establish rapport—and translated those principles into the algorithms that power Mabu's patient conversations."
