Episode 18 - Elise Racine: Using AI to Bridge Gaps in Healthcare Access

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Larissa: This podcast is recorded on the lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nations. We pay our respects to the traditional custodians of this country and elders, past and present. We extend our respects to any First Nations, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people joining us today.

Maddy: Welcome to today's episode of No Spoons to Give, the podcast where we explore life's ups and downs with neurodivergence, chronic illness and disability, and we chat with the voices that make our community so wonderful. How are you going today, Larissa?

Larissa: I am going great. I'm caffeinated. I'm very excited for the guests we have today. It's going to be such an incredible chat and I'm happy to be here. How are you?

Maddy: I am doing well. I've been having a bit of pain lately, but this is the best distraction. Chronic pain people, Spoony podcast is maybe the pain relief — this is not sponsored by doctors.

Larissa: Not medical advice.

Maddy: Not a doctor here. But it is fantastic to be here with you in the studio and I'm very excited for our guest today. Do you have a recommendation for me?

Larissa: So I've got a recommendation for you and it's keeping with the theme of today's episode, touching on health and AI, and we both know that you and I love a notebook.

Maddy: We do.

Larissa: So the fact that I've got this bit of technology is pretty up and coming for me, but I wanted to recommend a product I've been trialling the last month. It's not sponsored or anything like that. It is my Whoop Band or Whoop, I'm not quite sure how you say it. It's similar to the Oura ring, except it's a band that you wear around your wrist.

And I'm on the free trial, so I've had it for a month now, and initially I just got it to get insights into my sleep and for exercise and symptom tracking and all of that. But it's been incredible. It's given me really big insights into my sleep, which for me, it's really important for me with my ADHD because how I've slept that night really determines how my brain works.

But it's been incredible. Even a couple of weeks ago, it alerted me that my temperature was up and I might be getting sick and it told me to prioritise rest and hydration. And I did end up getting sick. Obviously, it can't reverse that, but it wasn't as severe as it could have been. Particularly when you live with other illnesses, a simple cold can really rock you and hang around.

Maddy: Absolutely.

Larissa: I've been on the free trial and I'm not sure if I will continue it because it is quite expensive and it's not financially accessible to a lot of people. I'm not sure if I'll keep paying for it, but definitely recommend at least doing the free trial and getting some of that data so you know where you stand. And also, remember to cancel the free trial. We all know I've been guilty of not cancelling a free trial, AKA the Duolingo Premium that I paid $500 for.

Maddy: We've all been there.

Larissa: We have, yeah. Unfortunately mine was a big one. But definitely recommend even just doing the trial. It's been a great bit of data for me to have.

Maddy: Thank you so much for that recommendation. I love how you dived deep into that product because for me, I feel like sometimes the details of it all can be a bit overwhelming and then I'm never quite sure how things work, so it's fantastic to hear exactly what it does.

My recommendation for you today is a book. I know, shocking. It's called Unseen: The Secret World of Chronic Illness by Jacinta Parsons. It's a brilliantly brutally honest and powerful memoir that lifts the veil on all the invisible parts of chronic illness, chronic pain and disability that's largely unseen by the rest of the world.

It delves into the author's diagnosis of Crohn's disease and the complexity of illness in the Australian healthcare system. But also, it talks about disability and chronic illness on a broader scale too, so it is relatable to international audiences. Jacinta is a radio presenter and she just really captures this unseen part of chronic illness and disability and chronic pain.

I read this when I was feeling very isolated with my own chronic pain and it spoke to me in a way that I can't really explain, but what can be explained is the hundreds of screenshots of the pages of the books that I took that I look at when I'm in hospital to get care for my chronic pain. So it has stayed with me. So yes, I do recommend it.

Larissa: I love those books or bits of content that stay with you and you just find yourself underlining it or earmarking the pages or taking photos to refer to. They're the best kind of books.

Maddy: Oh, they really are.

Larissa: Today we are lucky enough to be chatting with Elise Racine, an expert in AI and digital healthcare who's also pursuing a PhD at the University of Oxford and also one of our amazing Spoony advisors. Not to mention she's also an extremely talented artist and we're so excited to be speaking with her.

Maddy: Welcome, Elise. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Elise: Thank you so much for having me. It's an honour to be here. I'm very much looking forward to speaking with you today.

Maddy: Thank you.

Larissa: Thank you. For anyone who doesn't know you, would you mind introducing yourself and letting the audience know a little bit about who you are and what you do?

Elise: Yes, of course. Well, thank you, first of all, for the great introduction. A little bit more about me, so I'm a researcher advocate artist. I'm based in the Washington DC area, but I'm currently completing my PhD in Population Health at the University of Oxford.

So my research really centres on artificial intelligence in public health, specifically how we can maximise benefits while reducing potential harms. So for instance, I examine how various forms of bias related to race, ethnicity, disability, gender, et cetera, become encoded in AI-powered tools and then perpetuated in healthcare systems.

So over the last couple of years, I've looked at that. I've looked at inclusive AI policy, disability rights activism and justice-centred health innovation. So I'm particularly passionate about amplifying diverse voices in policy discussions to promote more equitable and inclusive technology developments.

And this motivation really stems from a deep commitment to justice and accessibility. I have a little more detail. I don't know if that's—

Larissa: So interesting.

Maddy: It's so interesting. I absolutely love how you're tackling those really big, but such important issues to deal with. The bias in AI is so serious, and being able to really work within the system to make it better, wow, you're doing amazing work.

Elise: Thank you. Thank you. It stems partly from, I've worked with a number of individuals with complex chronic health conditions throughout my career and really seeing how they struggle to get access to the healthcare they need. And then these tools, they have so much potential, how sometimes that also amplifies the disparities they're facing. And you don't want that to happen. We wanted to help people.

Larissa: So interesting. And I feel like we're at this pivotal point in the world where it feels like it could go either way. And I'm definitely not an expert in this space, but we have the potential to make AI help people and do something really amazing, but also without people like you in the world, it could just go the complete opposite direction. So I'm so glad we have people like you in the world that are helping us use and integrate AI for good. That's amazing.

Maddy: Yeah, I'm so glad. It makes me feel a bit better about the world and the future of tech and AI to know that there are people who are deeply looking at this issue and working with experts and within diverse communities to really figure out what some of the problems are and how to address them. Definitely makes me feel better.

Elise: Thank you. I appreciate that. There's amazing people working in the field, and Spoony also, you guys are doing amazing things. We need more companies like this. But I'll get more into why I'm such a huge fan later.

Maddy: So you've shared a tiny bit about why you decided to work and study within the areas of AI and digital healthcare, but I'd love to know a little bit more, especially with some of the earlier projects that you've worked on. Yeah, please, tell me a little bit more about what inspired you.

Elise: So to know what inspired me, we have to go back to my undergraduate. So I attended Stanford University, heart of Silicon Valley as an undergrad. And the summer before my junior year, I travelled to Northern India to Dharamshala and lived and worked with the Tibetan refugee population there and as well as the surrounding community in a hospital there.

And really saw firsthand the lack of access to care that was occurring and how healthcare systems could really struggle to meet complex needs, particularly for vulnerable populations. So coming back to Silicon Valley, being immersed in that ecosystem, I've been witness the tremendous potential of technology to really address healthcare challenges, which got me really excited.

And I ended up actually starting my own digital health company pretty much fresh out of college before pivoting and actually working as a practitioner in the space. And the more I was in that, the more I was seeing that innovation often bypassed the communities who needed it most. So this really inspired me to go back to school.

So first, I was at the London School of Economics. I got my Master's of Science in Health and International Development. I then pivoted and got my Master's of Public Administration with a concentration in Digitalization and Big Data at the Hertie School in Berlin, Germany, where I worked on a epidemiological modelling project during the COVID pandemic response.

And that ended up taking me to Oxford where I am now. And throughout each of those experiences, I have really seen more and more, how can we harness the potential of AI in digital tools to really address the healthcare challenges that I've also witnessed in my career?

So that's where I am now, is trying to bring all of this together and really make sure that these tools and technologies are benefiting all, including vulnerable populations who are often left out of these advancements.

Larissa: Wow, that's so interesting. I love how dialled in you are. And it's obviously you can't go achieve all of this overnight. You've been dialled into making a change in this space for such a long time, it sounds like. And I also love what you said about how a lot of the time, innovation misses the people who need it most.

Maddy: That is so true.

Larissa: That is so powerful and so true. I want to ask you a little bit about ethical AI. What does this mean? What is it?

Elise: I love this question because there's a number of opinions on it and we've actually changed in our thinking around it as well. So just to set up where I am, I really believe that ethical AI is not just about technical standards, it's about centering human values, dignity and well-being throughout the entirety of the AI lifecycle.

We've changed our thinking some. There's been a lot of focus, for example, on fairness and accountability, transparency, explainability. We're now also realising how much inclusion is really important about that. So it's really about designing and developing and deploying AI systems that promote these values.

And I also am a huge believer that ethical AI involves asking questions around power and governance. So, who's making decisions about these technologies? Who benefits? Who's creating them? Who's deploying them? Are they actually benefiting the communities that need them the most? Is it upholding consent and autonomy? Are these systems accessible?

All of these, I think are really important questions when we think about what ethical AI is. And so now there's a movement to, we're still very, very focused, again, on fairness, transparency, accountability, but a movement to also really incorporate inclusion to go beyond just do no harm and to really think of a model of reparative and justice-oriented AI.

And I think that to me is so exciting, particularly when we consider what and how much is at stake in healthcare. And so for this, it really means that we're centering an approach that instead of ignoring historical and ongoing injustices that shape our world, acknowledges them and is working to repair and address those.

So I think that's where ethical AI is going in the future, and I think initiatives like Spoony are really part of that. So I think that's part of why I love this question, is I think it is such a fascinating space and something that we actually need to be talking about more.

Larissa: And you touched on so many different points that I hadn't considered with ethical AI as well. That's so interesting.

Maddy: Yes, and it's so interesting. What I love, what you said was how that answer has changed over time because I'm coming from this as someone who doesn't really know the ins and outs of AI so much, and it's just so interesting to know that there has been this perspective for ethical AI focusing on transparency.

Which I see as more as almost a business-focused approach rather than the person-centred way that it really could be and should be. Thank you so much for sharing that. I feel like that's such a great introduction to ethical AI and what it has been and what it can be.

Larissa: I think it's so important to talk about too, the wonderful things AI can do. I think of someone who might not know much about AI, I think of my mom for example. Sorry mom, if you're listening, for calling you out, but an older person who might be on Facebook and see a fake AI video that's a bit of rage bait.

Some people, that's their only experience with AI, but I think this conversation we're having is really important in actually understanding how broad it is, and particularly from a public health perspective, all the amazing things it can do. So I'm really glad we're having this discussion.

Maddy: Yeah, absolutely. And that leads into my next question. I'm curious to know what you think the benefits that digital healthcare and ethical AI can have on the neurodivergent, chronically ill and disabled people who have been traditionally underserved by the healthcare system and still experience such disproportionate just barriers to receiving the care that they need and deserve.

Elise: Another great question. So part of the reason I am so passionate about digital healthcare, about ethical AI is particularly because it does have this tremendous potential to help communities that have been underserved by traditional healthcare systems really try to right those wrongs.

And so these technologies aren't just about convenience. They are fundamentally and can fundamentally transform access to care and quality of life for many people. Significant untapped potential here. So I have a couple points as to how it can do this. The first is that these communities really hold deep embodied knowledge about their conditions.

They are often the real experts, even if they've been dismissed by conventional medical systems as such. So ethical AI really can help formalise that expertise and that deepens community knowledge and centre it in care pathways rather than ignore or overriding it. I think that's something that's really exciting.

For chronically ill individuals, specifically, AI can help with symptom tracking and pattern recognition, potentially identifying correlations that might be missed in traditional care settings, where appointments, they're often infrequent, they're brief. These can be tools that really are with you day to day for all those kind of moments.

So for neurodivergent communities, something that's really exciting is that they can offer customizable interfaces and alternative communication tools that can create more accessible healthcare experiences that adapt to different sensory needs or communication styles. I think that's really important.

And then they can also reduce the friction faced in accessing care. So whether it's managing these fluctuating systems or navigating complex systems or communicating in ways that align with your neurodivergence, with your symptoms, all of that can help reduce the friction and help get people...

Remote possibility is one example of this, where you can really get access to the care that you need in a way that isn't physically taxing or financially burdensome are simply impossible for many. So one disease or a set of conditions I advocate for is Long COVID and ME where you are dealing with patients who are bedbound and on the most severe side. And these individuals are pretty much abandoned by the healthcare system.

And then the last bit I'll say is that perhaps most importantly, these tools can really help reduce isolation and build community. So this is a US stat, but research suggests that approximately 40% of adults in the US with debilitating disability or chronic illness report experiencing extreme loneliness or social isolation. And that has very real health effects.

And so platforms like Spoony demonstrate how technology can create these really safe spaces for connection and peer support that weren't previously possible, or people were maybe looking to alternatives like social media that weren't built for this purpose, but we've seen a lot of toxicity come up.

So this can really help create that social connection that's crucial for clinical outcomes for overall wellbeing. That's one thing, but also help connect you with the information that can help you get diagnosed sooner, treated sooner, et cetera.

I know a number of individuals who have specifically drawn from these communities and that knowledge, and it's really improved their outcomes and it's led to much quicker results where right now it's taking people very long time, if you do experience disability, chronic illness, neurodivergence to get those diagnoses, healthcare, et cetera.

So I think this could overall just really shift the dynamics in healthcare more broadly and make sure that it's working better for patients.

Larissa: That is so interesting. I love what you said too about harnessing the knowledge that our community already has about their own health. If you've got a lesser known condition or a chronic condition that it's hard to explain to a doctor, we hold so much knowledge about our own conditions and our own symptoms.

And quite often, you'll go to a doctor or specialist and maybe those symptoms that so many people are experiencing aren't in the literature yet. Is that something AI can bring together, harnessing the power of people's lived experience and bringing that, I guess, to the forefront of actually helping them get answers or treatment?

Elise: Definitely. Just think about how community forums right now are playing a really important role in helping people recognise what's going on with their bodies, helping people prepare for health appointments with questions they can ask, medications they can try, other therapies, et cetera. AI has the potential to formalise that even more and draw even more insights from that in a way that really can help communities and individuals.

So there's a possibility that these tools can look at huge amounts of data and all of this community knowledge, and then you can engage with the tool and share what's going on with you. And instead of you having to scroll through and try to... Which, it can be very time-consuming, it can be emotionally draining. Again, because of certain conditions or disabilities, it can be hard to do that. It can be very difficult.

And instead, taking all of this and giving you answers quicker. So I think that's one really big potential. But then again, there's also the potential of just having those personal connections happen faster. Spoony is a match where you can meet friends. That's a very promising tool where you can connect really much more easily, find people who are experiencing something similar. And that's extremely powerful.

Maddy: Yeah, absolutely. And I really love what you said about making healthcare work for the patients and the people who are actually using the system 'cause for a lot of the time, as someone who has had many adventures with the healthcare system, it feels like the system is working for the system sometimes and it doesn't actually tie in with the experience that you need to have as a patient to receive that care. So that's really exciting.

And I really love what you said about how that community building space has so much potential because that statistic about loneliness, that is devastating and it is so real. I live with ME and it's really tough. I have a lot of friends who are bedbound and their experience of life is incredibly different to everyone else's. It's incredibly hard. And if there's a way to even help them make their life even 2 - 5% better, that would be huge.

And these people don't get their voices... and they don't get highlighted because they don't have the energy to be able to use their voices to advocate a lot of the time. So it's wonderful. And from someone who struggles with that condition, it means a lot to know that you are working really hard to really address that problem and make a big difference in those people's lives.

Elise: I appreciate you sharing more about your experience, and I'm glad that this work feels like something that can really help. I have a number of friends who are severe or very severe from Long COVID, and these are incredible, brilliant, amazing people and we cannot let them get lost.

And I really believe that AI and digital healthcare can really offer tools that make sure that people can participate in society and really just show the vibrancy that they have and to give in a way that works for them, in a way that works within their energy envelopes, works within their accessibility needs. It makes it a way that it's not burdensome, it's something they can do. And I think that's really powerful.

Larissa: Absolutely. We're just going to take a quick ad break and then we'll be back to chat with Elise after the break. Hey, Maddy, do you want to know what one of my favourite profile features is on Spoony?

Maddy: That you can use it to post more photos of your dog?

Larissa: I'll take any opportunity I can to post dog pics, but no. Did you know that Spoony allows you to share your support needs on your profile so that your new friends can understand you a bit better? On mine, I've got routines, quiet spaces, energy conservation, and visual schedules because we all know how much I love mind maps and naps.

Maddy: That's so cool. Can I put energy conservation there? I have to pace my energy or else I get really exhausted.

Larissa: You absolutely can. There's so many cool profile features that make Spoony unique to any other social platform. You can also display your conditions or illnesses, share your interests, and let people know how your energy levels are tracking by using our signature Spoon status.

I'd really encourage people to check it out for themselves. You can sign up for free using the link in this podcast, or you can find us in the App Store or Google Play.

I want to ask you another question, Elise. So on top of all the work you're doing, you also find time to be creative and you're such a talented artist. What's been one of your favourite parts of incorporating creativity into your busy life?

Elise: Oh, man, another great question. Art has always played a very, very special role in my life since... My mom loves telling the story of her carrying my stroller up and down the steps of the Louvre when I was one years old and putting me in front of all the art.

Growing up in DC, was very, very lucky to have access to incredible resources and just have that creativity really fostered in me and a lot of amazing role models around that. And so it's always been this really incredible outlet. The academic and advocacy worlds, startup worlds, all of these can be very heavy. Burnout is a very common thing.

So art really does help me process and reflect through a different lens, but also helps ground me. I find it relaxing. So I think it's very important from a mental health and self-care perspective to engage in creative outlets for me. But I also, and I've been increasingly lucky to do this, I have been able to increasingly use it as a way to explore and engage with the research and work I'm doing, including to communicate complex topics and issues.

So I work a lot with surveillance and data extraction, algorithmic bias, for example. Art and creative outlooks is one way to really make those topics more accessible, to connect with other people about it, to also make it feel more human and emotional. And it also helps me, again, process it in a different way. So I really see a wonderful synergy between my research and my artistic practise, where each informs and enriches the other.

And so my academic work really gets to provide this conceptual basis and depth for my art, while my artistic practise helps me approach these research questions with more creativity and openness. I really do think that amazing research, it's a very creative space as well and sometimes we lose that, particularly with the publish or perish attitude that we see a lot in academia.

So it helps me slow down and helps me just really think outside the box and approach it from different ways while keeping it also really connected to the communities that I am doing this with and doing this for, and get to know also their perspective more and help people really engage with it so I can have more of that feedback and that iterative process as part of my work.

Maddy: Oh, thank you so much for sharing. That is so interesting and wonderful to know how it has made such a difference in your personal life, but also within the work that you do too. I hadn't thought about art being a way to process the research that you are undertaking, and that is so interesting and it makes so much sense 'cause you'd be using different parts of your brain in a way to look at the data in that way. So thank you. That is so interesting to know.

Larissa: Yeah, I love that. I find even with the work we do or any part of my life, as a busy adult, sometimes creativity can be the first thing that drops off, and you might find yourself in those stagnant phases, but then going back into being artistic and being creative, you find your work brain is more open and idea generation and just critical thinking.

That's just for me. Just being creative is so essential to your professional life and especially the work you're doing, Elise. That's such a really cool insight. I love that.

Maddy: Yeah. I feel like creativity is always looked down upon as the thing that... You're meant to be pursuing maths and getting good at numbers and things like that, but creativity is not valued in that way. And it's actually just so essential because-

Larissa: So interesting.

Maddy: ... as you said, it really can shape the way that you approach every part of your life, I think.

Larissa: For sure. My background is in a double degree of science, and I was always taught, math, science. Math, science. No languages, no guitar, no drawing. And as an adult, I've gotten into art and being creative so much more. And just finding that creative flow is so beautiful. It's so healthy for our brains too.

Maddy: Oh, it is. It really is. I want to talk a little bit more about art. As you've said, art can be such a powerful tool to encourage change and challenge the status quo. You're the founder of de PALOMA, an initiative that uses creative expression as a catalyst for critical reflection and social change. What made you decide to start de PALOMA, and what are you hoping to achieve with it?

Elise: So what made me decide to start this, not to sound like a broken record, but I have to go back to India. So something else I did, I ended up spending three summers in total living with the Tibetan refugee population in India, and college, ended up doing my honours thesis on the Tibetan cause and protest tactics.

I was a sociology major in undergrad. That was another life, but I still try to draw from it. So something I did as part of that was I kept on coming back to the US and no one had any idea what I was talking about. They hadn't heard about the Tibetan cause. They hadn't heard about any of it.

And so art became actually a way for me to share that community that had really welcomed me into their homes and to share what they were going through with everyone that I was engaging with, and I really started noticing then just how powerful art can be. I'm a huge fan of Magnum Photographers, for example, and just Steve McCurry as I'm just saying.

But these individuals who really had used art as a way to start a global dialogue around critical issues, and we're seeing that it's been a massive tool forever really around that. And so as I was continuing to get into this area, I kept on going back to that experience in college, and I kept on going back to these roots of these people that I really admired.

And I found myself running into a similar issue where I was dealing with very, very complex subjects and was having a hard time always sharing my research and work with people in a way that felt accessible and approachable. And I really saw this need for also more just public engagement with these topics.

So an example that I think really demonstrates why we need this is that there was a landmark study that came out a couple of years ago that showed how a widely used healthcare algorithm was exhibiting significant racial bias. It consistently scored black patients as being healthier than equally sick white patients, simply because the algorithm was using healthcare costs as a proxy for health needs.

And less money is typically spent on black patients, this was in the United States, even with the same level of need. So the algorithm falsely concluded that they were healthier. Huge problem. It was deployed in systems across the United States and impacted millions of patients and it took a long time to figure that this was happening.

And I kept on going back to, these are issues that I work on. I work on algorithmic bias, I work on how these systems, again, can have fantastic potential for benefits, but also unfortunately, if they are not designed and developed and deployed ethically, can really have massive harm.

And I kept on thinking about, what if people just had more knowledge about these topics? How could they maybe self-advocate? 'Cause there were talks about how some people were like, "Yeah, I thought something was weird." But they didn't know. There was a lack of education that they could really tap into to understand what that could potentially be.

And so I deal with topics that aren't obvious to most people unless you've had some kind of background or exposure to it. And so I really started to think about how can creative expression help bridge this gap between complex research and everyday experience in a way that amplifies the perspectives of those most affected and helps give them the knowledge and the tools and the platform to advocate for themselves?

So that's a big part of the goal, the diploma, is to really democratise these critical discussions by translating complex research into accessible creative formats and to foster more inclusive, nuanced public dialogue about emerging technologies.

So we're particularly committed to centering perspectives from communities that have traditionally been marginalised in technology developments because their insights really are essential for building more equitable, inclusive systems.

Larissa: Wow.

Maddy: Wow, that is so interesting and fantastic that you are working to really bridge that gap and that art is such a powerful tool that it really can compress those complex topics and transform them into something that can be understood by a lot of people because there is just not the education around how these systems work.

I feel like in our talk, I have had a whole lecture and amazing course on how this works and the different kind of biases in the system. So I feel like education is always the best path forward. And art is such a powerful catalyst for change.

Larissa: I love how excited you are about Spoony, Elise. What made you so excited to partner with Spoony as an advisor?

Elise: Oh, I'm so excited about Spoony. Spoony just honestly immediately stood out to me because it is rooted in lived experience. I think that's a big part of it. It's not just a tech solution. It really is this community-led initiative that's actually listening to members of the disability, neurodivergent and chronically ill communities.

That is so rare. It really is, but it's so needed. And unfortunately, we're in a landscape where technology is often developed without meaningful input from the communities it's meant to serve, and Spoony really is flipping the script on that. And I was also just drawn just to the team's thoughtfulness and values first mindset.

Again, they're not just building something useful, they're building something empowering that recognises users as experts in their own conditions, that creates these very, very critical safe spaces not only for that expertise to be shared and amplified, but also for those really real connections and that community building that we need so much.

These communities have been traditionally massively underserved by healthcare systems. And so if we really put community at the centre of development decisions, that's powerful. That's amazing. So basically, the platform really just embodies many of the ethical principles that I advocate for in my research, and I was really drawn to that and I was really impressed by also Spoony's ambitions to become Australia's first impact unicorn.

I think that's amazing and so exciting. It's really inspiring to see a platform that is not only centering, again, traditionally underserved communities, but it's also demonstrating that this approach can be successful and sustainable. We need more initiatives like this. It's also extremely viable from a business perspective.

And I, again, having spent a number of years in Silicon Valley, unfortunately kept on running into some barriers around that where there was certain communication that healthcare that focused on women or the disability, chronic ill, neurodivergent communities, that that wasn't the most financial or business-oriented decision.

And that's just so false. It's completely false. Particularly, it's such a huge portion of the population and so we need really more tech that is tapping into that. And Spoony's doing that and proving that this makes sense. This is smart, this is awesome, this is empowering. So that's what really drew me and a big part of why I'm so excited.

Larissa: Thank you so much for saying all of that. They were really lovely words. And it's so brilliant to have advisors like yourself who believe in what we're doing and believe in our mission. And we talk about our mission and think about our mission day in, day out, but to hear it come from someone as an advisor who believes in us so strongly, and I guess you can see that the work we're doing is coming across to other people. That's really special to hear that.

Maddy: And particularly from someone who's an expert in the areas that we are traversing and trying to learn about, we're so excited and so glad to have you as one of Spoony's advisors. Thank you so much for speaking with us today. It's been an absolute pleasure.

Elise: Thank you so much for having me. I love the podcast. I love what you guys are doing, so I feel very, very lucky to have been part of this conversation today. So thank you.

Larissa: Thank you.

Maddy: Thank you so much.

Larissa: Hopefully we get to meet in real life one day as well.

Maddy: Yes, please.

Elise: Very much looking forward to that.

Larissa: Thanks, Elise.

Maddy: Thank you so much.

Larissa: This podcast is brought to you by Spoony, a safe space for neurodivergent, chronically ill and disabled people to make friends and find support. Spoony is the world's first social app designed with accessibility at its core. If you liked this episode, it would mean the absolute world to us if you could hit subscribe or share it with a friend.

If you'd like to join our Spoony community, you can download the app via the App Store or Google Play. And if you'd like to keep up to date with us on social media, you can follow us by the links in the show notes.