Faculty Feature: Dr. Louis Aronne

For this newsletter’s Faculty Feature, Nick Bartelo and Shakarr Wiggins (SVG Co-chairs of Outreach) had the opportunity to sit down with Dr. Louis Aronne, Sanford I. Weill Professor of Metabolic Research at Weill-Cornell Medical College. Dr. Aronne received his M.D. from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1981. He is the former chairman of the board of the American Board of Obesity Medicine and has authored more than 100 papers and book chapters on obesity. Advocating for the recognition of obesity as a disease for decades, Dr. Aronne has changed the world’s view of the obesity epidemic. After working for over 20 years in the development of obesity research, Dr. Aronne has expanded the availability of care to many more people through the creation of Intellihealth, a company focused on developing a software solution that could effectively scale specialized treatment of obesity beyond the clinic to meet the magnitude of the obesity epidemic. 

SVG: What were the main drivers that led you to transition from solely academically focused methods of patient care to an entrepreneurial endeavor?

Aronne: I have been involved in obesity research and treatment since 1986, working on many compounds and also having an active clinic. During that period, treating people with obesity was not a very popular thing to do. Over time, I edited guidelines from the NIH and developed a model of treatment, involving the use of medication, dietary interventions, and behavioral changes, which has now turned into the field known as obesity medicine. We established the American Board of Obesity Medicine and we now have over 5000 physicians who have passed our exam, which certifies minimum competence in the field. So obesity medicine is now becoming part of healthcare. 
One problem with delivering obesity medicine care to patients is that providers need resources and support in getting started clinically doing this. If we want to scale up the kind of treatment strategies that we've developed, which we've now shown can produce about a 10% weight loss very durably, we need a large-scale solution. That solution has to be a software solution so that doctors and nurse practitioners anywhere in the country can deliver this kind of care to their patients. The answer is in telehealth and that's what made me start Intellihealth. 

SVG: What would be your main suggestions for a graduate student who wants to start their own company?

Aronne: It's more difficult than it looks. You have to really be dedicated to the idea. You know, we were on the verge of failure multiple times. Now we're talking to multi billion dollar companies who want our product. But it's taken 15 years. Are you ready to devote 15 years to this kind of endeavor? It can be a lot more complicated than it looks, especially when it comes to medical issues. So you've got to be in it for the long haul.

SVG: How have you formed a team that can accomplish the goals of the company? How do you determine who makes the cut and who can work in your environment?

Aronne: I think that in an area like ours, which is so new and kind of out on a limb, it was finding people who themselves were really interested in what we were doing. And so what you want to do is, explain what you're doing and see if people become fanatics about it. And I think it's critical when starting to actually have this kind of passion. That's what you want to find in people.

SVG: You launched your major platform Evolve during 2020. Can you speak to how the COVID pandemic impacted use or transition time for major hospital systems to add this platform to their clinical care? How was launching a new idea during this time?

Aronne: It was difficult. During the pandemic, our clients shifted their focus to managing the pandemic. It pushed off a lot of the implementation that we had hoped for. However, it also presented opportunities, because there have been questions in the minds of many people about how serious an illness obesity is - is it really a disease? Or does it really matter? People did not perceive that it harmed health. But it's so clear, through COVID, that it is a disease and it does impact health. 

Also, the kinds of tools that we are using now include telehealth. We went from 100% live in person visits to 100% telehealth in a very short period of time. And we're still at 85 or 90% telehealth visits. Telehealth patients want to interact with us in this way in the treatment of obesity. Our practice is really optimally suited to telehealth. This is making treatment more accessible to patients, while reducing the costs. For example, we're delivering care to people in upstate New York who before could not make the trip and would really be impractical to manage them. Now it's easy to manage them, even though they are hundreds of miles away.

SVG: Did you have a mentor who helped you get to where you are today? And if so, what lessons were you taught that led to your success

Aronne: Dr. John Laragh was Chief of Cardiology at the time I arrived at Cornell. Treatment of obesity was not popular at the time. He said to me, ‘What you're doing is totally out there, people can't even conceive of what you mean when you're talking about weight being regulated by the brain. This problem is just what people thought about me and the treatment of hypertension in the 1950’s.’ Everyone thought hypertension was a behavioral problem. Dr. Laragh then developed many of the modern drugs that we use to treat hypertension, and now there are more than 100 of them. He said, ‘You're telling me the exact same story from when I was back in the 1950s. And I think that you're right, and you should continue on this, no matter what anybody says.’ 

There are people who are going to try to beat you down and say you don't know what you're talking about. And that has absolutely happened, even recently. Despite the fact that I'm a Weill Professor, people are constantly telling me, “What are you doing? This is such a crazy idea.” If you have an idea and you have support for that idea, and there is evidence that it works, you have to be willing to stick with it, no matter what. I think this was the best support at that time and was the thing that kind of set me off on this path into this area.