Adam Torres and Maria Uloko discuss VULVAi.
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Show Notes:
How can a public health crisis be so hidden in plain sight? In this episode, Adam Torres and Dr. Maria Uloko, CEO & Founder at VULVAi, explore Dr. Uloko’s background and why she launched VULVAi.
About Maria Uloko
As a board-certified urologist, she specialize in comprehensive sexual health for all genders, ranging from menopause management to complex erectile dysfunction. Recognized as a world leader in chronic pelvic pain and vulvar conditions, She is dedicated to improving her patient’s quality of life through a compassionate and inclusive approach to often stigmatized subjects. She empower her patients to take ownership of their sexual health by providing a shame-free space for questions and stories, and she actively work to close gaps in disparities of care by promoting diversity and inclusivity.
She founded MUMD Beverly Hills to deliver specialized, patient-centered care for chronic pelvic pain and recurrent UTIs, focusing on innovative, science-based solutions that address the root causes of these conditions. Through MUMD, theu provide comprehensive, personalized treatment plans that help patients regain their quality of life.
Building on her commitment to women’s health, she also founded VULVAi, the world’s first women’s health search engine designed as a patient advocate tool. VULVAi uses advanced AI technology, trained on extensive datasets of vulvar conditions, symptoms, and treatments, to offer accurate and personalized recommendations. This groundbreaking platform empowers both patients and providers by enhancing access to vital information and supporting better health outcomes.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to missionmatters. com and click on Be Our Guest to Apply. All right, so today’s guest is Dr. Maria Uloko, and she’s the CEO and Founder over at Volva AI.
Dr. Uloko, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. All right. So we got a lot to talk about today. So we’re going to get into Volva AI and why you founded the company. But before we do that, I’d like to start this episode, the way that we start them off with what we like to call our mission matters minute.
So Dr. Uloko at Mission Matters, our aim and our goal is to amplify stories for entrepreneurs, executives, and experts. That’s what we do. Dr Loco. What mission matters to you? The mission that matters to me. I love that question. The mission that matters to me is Helping everyone to have great, healthy, loving, fun sex.
And looking at the way that the different sexes access healthcare. I am one of seven urologists in the world that is trained in the medical and surgical management of sexual dysfunction of all genders. And what that means is that most urologists do men’s health or men’s sexual health, and everyone thinks that most gynecologists do women’s sexual health, but in actuality, most gynecologists are not trained in women’s sexual health.
And so what that means is that 50 percent of the population just doesn’t have access to anything regarding their sexual health, and that can be from. It could be recurrent infections. It could be chronic pelvic pain. It could be recurrent ATIs. Overactive bladder symptoms low libido disorders with arousal and even issues with orgasm.
And like I said, there’s only seven of us in the world that are able to take care of the rest of the world and 50 percent of the population. And so I want to close that gender gap in access to healthcare and sexual health because I’m a big believer that Sexual health is one of the best markers for overall health.
Hmm. , how can that be? Like, this is one of the reasons I love doing what I do, Dr. Loco, because every day I learn something new and when you just blew my mind, how could there only be seven? Like, how is that possible? It’s such an important topic. Like how? Yes, that is, you know, it’s so interesting.
I feel the same way now, but when I did my fellowship in 2020, I, Remember kind of this, attitude of, well, why would you want to do that as a urologist? You know, we do men’s health and that doesn’t really make any sense. That’s the gynecologist job. And it wasn’t until my fellowship where I realized it’s like, actually, that’s not even their job.
They don’t even want this job either. And so I think it’s this kind of unknown secret in healthcare that 50 percent of the population just isn’t getting sexual health. , when we, because we’re so divided based off of sex and gender and the way we access healthcare, , The other side isn’t talking to the other side.
Is that kind of like, I don’t know if I’m wording this right. Is this like a form of like ingrain, I don’t know if it’s sexism or like, like what, like a divide? Like is that, am I saying it right? Like, is that kind of ingrained in the system almost? Yes. Yes. Medical sexism is real. And I really had no idea until I, I started doing this work of working with both with all genders and all sexes and just seeing the stories.
You know, I love my male patients. I love being able to help them with their sexual health and it was actually really fascinating is that a lot of them would be like, , yeah, like dr you loco. I love that, You know, all I really want is to please my wife, like, or my partner, and, , they are not satisfied, or they’re not interested in sex, and if they’re usually, like, an age matched cohort, I’m usually like, hey, dude, listen, remember, you know how you’re in my office right now, and we are talking about your sexual health concerns.
We did a full workup. , we’re gonna start you on, we’re gonna do all the work, the diagnostic workup and the treatment for it. , your female partner doesn’t have that, and so, it’s not just you, like, it’s not you, per se, it’s the system that is failing her, but you’re feeling the brunt of that, because so many of my male patients really just want to have healthy, happy sex lives with their partners, and if their partner doesn’t even have a doctor to go to, you know, we’re really, really failing the system, and that was my first thought.
glimpse at the the medical sexism that is so rampant. I think it’s one of when you see it, you can’t unsee it. And so ideally, well, now that you just told me, and I didn’t know until this conversation right now, you can’t unsee it. You’re right. Like, once you hear it, you’re like, wait a minute, that doesn’t even doesn’t even make sense.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we are. We aren’t even taught a lot about women’s bodies in medical school and training. I’ve been. In medical school since I was 17, and it wasn’t until year 13 when I did my fellowship. where I actually learned way more about women’s bodies than I did in all of my time in medicine. You know, it’s just like, even the foundations of our knowledge and our training just doesn’t include women.
And so, you know, it’s, it’s all right there, hidden in plain sight. We don’t know until someone actually says something.
And that is my goal, is to not only help the medical community see it, but to help patients start seeing it. And then also, not only shine a light to it, but then actually come up with solutions that expedite closing that gap. And that’s why I founded Volva AI. I do want to go further into Volvo AI, but before we do whenever I see someone that’s you know, highly trained, like a doctor, somebody that spent a lot, a lot of time, I’m always curious about like, so when you’re, and I’ll make the stereotype, you tell me if I’m off from your experience, but in my experience, interviewing lots of, you know, very, Educated individuals going the entrepreneurial route or even stepping in there, starting the company, doing something else.
It can be a little, a little challenging from the standpoint of your peers. Don’t necessarily always get it or otherwise it could be peers, whether I’ll use your example, not saying you said this, but the example of a doctor could be other medical people you went to medical school with or other things like that, that maybe, they’re, they’re in their profession, but they don’t necessarily want to go the entrepreneurial route or don’t go.
Take that other step. I’m a huge fan , of individuals that do that like yourself. And you don’t know this, of course, this is our first time talking, but I’m just a huge fan of it because I feel like more individuals that are extremely educated and extremely niche or have certain expertise should go out there and be the ones that are leading the way, making improvements in society, if they feel that’s their calling, by the way, no pressure, obviously, but if they feel that they’re calling, I’m just curious, like what’s been your experience just in general.
You know, going that entrepreneurial route, like how, how has that been for you? Yeah, it’s like drinking out of a fire hose. Wait, in comparison to medical school? I don’t Yeah, yeah, medicine’s easy. I’ve been doing this since I was a high schooler. Oh my gosh, hold on. Ow, that just hurt my heart.
Medicine’s easy. This is easy. Entrepreneurship is like, that’s my quote for this one. Go ahead, please. Yeah, I mean, complex reconstruction, easy. Well, I, I think there’s, I’m, I’m joking a little bit, but I do think what, what we learn, yeah, it’s different. What we learn in medicine, we are taught to, to follow a certain path, right?
You don’t go off the beaten path, and if you just keep moving forward along the path that was predetermined for you, you will succeed. It’s just all about how much hard work you can do. Can you do hard work? But, entrepreneurship has been this like really fascinating, there is no path, you can, I mean there’s like definitely one path, but there’s also like 70 paths, and you can create your own path if you want, and that has been a, such a, a different way of thinking, especially when as a surgeon you’re a little rigid in a lot of the ways, but, and also, I’m a dreamer, and a big dreamer and I often times don’t like to stay on the beaten path anyways.
So everything about my personality actually makes sense to go the entrepreneurial route. I am a huge problem solver and my favorite thing is solving problems. And When you go in the traditional route of being a physician, you realize that the problems that you want to solve are so much bigger than one person can, can potentially do.
Oftentimes when everyone’s kind of thinking this like group think of like, this is just how it is, this is how it’s always done. It doesn’t breed a lot of innovation or creativity or Like action and as an action person that wants to solve big problems and scale those problems globally and scale the solutions globally.
I don’t want to scale the problem, scale the solutions globally. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I saw, this is where I saw tech really was filling in the gaps where healthcare was failing. And, It really was a mission driven exercise to leave my very comfortable academic safe job that I trained for for 15 years and say, you know what, I’m going to, I’m going to start something new.
Yeah. No. And I, I relate to that 100 percent I had a five year 14 years in finance before going into media full time. And people thought I was crazy for sure. Like they thought I was crazy. Like, what, what is Adam doing? Like, huh? Like that makes no sense. He’s got a, he’s got a, you know, a book of business manages a couple hundred million dollars, like very, you know, consistent lifestyle.
And now they want to be, and he wants to be. What? Like people thought I was out of my mind and maybe I was honestly. And time will tell if I made the right decision. Still not bought and still don’t know, but we’ll see. But that, that being said that’s why I’m just always so interested in to hear somebody else’s experience and journey with that, because I know people will listen to this better.
Either thinking about like going out and I’m not saying anybody has to be an entrepreneur, but they’re thinking about whatever their dream or their passion is. Doesn’t even have to be work related, just period. , and do they want to do some other things that maybe not everybody around them understands?
And if it’s your vision and if it’s your goal, then you know, go for it. So that’s what I hope to Bring out when I asked you that question, by the way, because everybody’s different and we don’t know, like, nobody knows at the end of the day, like, what’s going to be right, right? Like, you guys are the lived experience, right?
Exactly. Exactly. No, I 100 percent feel that , I mean, I think a lot of people Do things face off with fear, or don’t do things face off with fear and I have always kind of been like, you just gotta keep moving forward. You just, like, you may not have all the answers right now, but you just gotta start, and you just have to try. And you also have to always remember your why because if you get up every day and you remember why you’re doing this stuff, it makes the, the losses easier and the wins even better.
And I am an immigrant , I moved to this country and. My parents, although had a really great work ethic that I could mirror and watch. I had to raise myself. I had to figure out how to go to high school, middle school. My parents didn’t even know what the acts or SATs were. I’ve had to figure things out my entire life, and when you are seven years old trying to figure out and navigate the world, you learn a really, really
You learn at a young age that like. You just got to figure things out and things will work out as long as you are moving forward and making progress and being kind to yourself and being okay with Making mistakes and then learning from them. Granted, all of this is much easier to say than done, but those are the things that I try to practice every day.
Yeah. Let’s let’s jump around here. I do want to spend some time on Vulva AI and why you founded it. So maybe let’s start getting a little bit into the company. Tell us more. Yeah. So, like I said, I’m one of seven in the world that is able to diagnose and treat any sort of sexual dysfunction particularly in women.
And if we look at the stats of people suffering with vulvovaginal conditions, whether that’s chronic pelvic pain, recurrent UTIs, overactive bladder symptoms, recurrent vaginal recurrent urinary tract infections. A lot of that stuff actually comes from the vulva, but because most doctors aren’t trained on how the vulva works, what’s normal, what isn’t normal, , how to diagnose, how to treat in a really straightforward algorithmic manner, most of these patients are going into a healthcare system that truly doesn’t know anything about their bodies.
And the thing is a hundred percent. of women will experience this in their lifetime. And this, these incidents increase significantly as you age. Like, why is it that older women get UTIs all the time? It’s not because that’s just what happens. There’s an actual negligence that’s happening in the healthcare system.
And so on average, one in four women will have chronic pelvic pain at any given time. A hundred and fifty million women are suffering from recurrent pelvic pain, recurrent NTIs. All these vulvovaginal symptoms, just in the U. S. alone, it takes seven to ten years to get your first diagnosis. up to three doctors to get that diagnosis, and 35 percent of these patients will see up to 15 doctors.
When you’re, like, I end up having to be the specialist that, like, I say the buck stops with me. Like, people come to me as their last resort and I know how to fix them. And I know it’s actually really easy to fix a lot of patients that have been told that they have quote unquote chronic conditions.
But they’ve actually just been misdiagnosed for decades. And so what we are doing, and I have research to show and prove, that we are essentially misdiagnosing so many women. And so, because I’m a very empathetic human being. I, I sit with and sit with my patients a lot. I’ll spend a lot of time with my patients.
I’ve seen over 2, 000 patients with these symptoms. And they’re diagnosed and treated. And I would say it’s one of the most heartbreaking things when I’m going to clinic and I know everyone’s going to cry. My men’s health clinic is going to be high fives and smiles and my women’s health clinic is just going to be tears.
And so I created over four years in doing research, created an algorithm of how to approach diagnosing and treating these patients that are a huge part of the population and are just largely ignored. Figure out a way to scale, like essentially scale my brain to the rest of the world and scale my abilities and how I think about these processes and how to get them diagnosed and how to get them treated.
to the rest of the world. So that’s how we created Vulva AI. It literally simulates the clinical reasoning , of world renowned vulvar specialists for physicians and patients alike. The idea for physicians is that most doctors don’t get the formal training in their medical education, whether that’s in medical school or even in residency.
Most gynecologists don’t know how to do this. Most doctors that see women don’t know how to do this. So We’re actually directly teaching them how to do this, but using predictive AI models. And for patients, let’s say that your institution doesn’t want to work with mobile AI, we, I still really wanted to create something that patients could use to advocate for themselves.
Because one of the constant feedbacks that I got from my patients, or things that I constantly saw was, they kept going to doctors that were essentially, you Not lying to them, but like, clearly a doctor that hadn’t read up at all. Like, didn’t even do a quick Google search. And because the patient doctor relationship is one that’s very vulnerable for patients, and there’s not a lot of great resources on the internet for where to find this information if you’re just a, your average human being that doesn’t have, like, isn’t a world class researcher.
You aren’t going to find this stuff. And so I wanted to be able to create avenues for educational resources for patients so that they can learn about their bodies, they can use our predictive AI model to actually figure out what’s going on with their symptoms, what it could potentially be, how to then get diagnosed, how to talk to your doctor about diagnosis, and then what is the recommended treatment, and then how to make sure that when you’re going into the doctor’s office, you’re advocating for yourself because so many women are essentially gaslit.
I think the The percentage is about 76 percent of women who have ever experienced health care have experienced gaslighting, medical gaslighting. And so now women will no longer be gaslit because they’ll actually have credible information about their bodies, how to get diagnosed and how to get treated.
The idea is that it’s going to cut down health care costs, it’s going to also cut down direct cost to the patient, and it’s going to improve diagnosis. And improve treatment outcome. this is great. I mean, it’s just great to hear that you’ve been able to put this together so that so many people can be helped really, and that don’t even know and that just that when you think about this concept that you’ve been mentioned of medical gaslighting.
Like to be on the receiving end of that and not even knowing, right? Because again, you don’t know what you don’t know. So like you, you mentioned I think I’ll get the number right. You said like something patients get to 15 people before getting to you or, or before getting to you. Yep. 35 percent of all patients suffering with chronic vulva vaginal symptoms will be up to 15 doctors.
Yeah. , that’s a significant amount and each one of those, you know, it’s not, obviously I’m not saying that any of those doctors are not trying, right? I’m not saying that, I just mean like, you know, their hearts are, I’m sure, in the right place, like, I’ll make that broad statement, but I just mean that nobody’s intentionally trying to, but it just appears to me, at least from what I’m learning here today, that it’s just kind of the system, right?
Like, there’s just some, there’s some, and that’s what you’re helping , to fix, in my opinion, with Vulva AI. Am I, do, am I off on that or do I have that? That’s exactly it. That’s, it’s how do we get wide scale education and training, not only to physicians, But also directly to patients , and how do we start bridging this insurmountable gap?
I don’t think the traditional way, because the way I was doing it was I was, I was at a conference every weekend for two years trying to teach doctors how to do this work, you know, and that’s not conducive. I was running a full clinic, running a research lab. And also when I had free time I was going to teach other doctors.
And I realized that like I could teach maybe 50 doctors, but in an hour lecture, but they’re not actually going to change their practice management, which was what’s ultimately going to save lives and improve their patient’s quality of life. And so on top of all of that work, I was just burning myself out for.
For not really the same return on investment, because for me, the investment in that is that patients are helped. And I really didn’t feel that patients were being helped from going to all these conferences and lecturing and teaching, because it didn’t actually, it was just so much information all at one time, that doctors couldn’t possibly take all of that back into their practice.
And so, I want to, I’m a big believer in, Work smarter and harder. And I, I tried to figure out we can utilize an AI because , how I think about AI is it’s a great tool to fill in the gaps where humans are failing. And one of the biggest failures. In medicine right now is around women’s health.
So I really see a beautiful merging of AI, healthcare, advocacy, and innovation in this space. This is amazing. And . Dr. Uloko if somebody is listening or, or watching this and they want to learn more about what you’re doing over at Vulva AI, or they want to connect and follow the journey, how do they do that?
Yes please. So this is the thing, right, where what I’m trying to do is not only cause widespread education, I’m trying to cause a bull bar revolution. It is going to take a, an act of God to get healthcare to change on a wide scale level, which looks like education reform, training reform, restructuring of how we train and teach doctors all throughout the country.
And so a lot of people will hear my story and be like, go her. no, no, no. I need people to join me in the site, whether that means that if you know some, a legislator talking to them about this, you know, very obvious And yet, hidden, a public health crisis that’s happening in women’s health.
If you are an investor, investing in women and not just products, there’s a lot of, in the FemTech space, everyone wants a product or a telehealth, but we, they devalue the importance of education. So, investing in. email founders that are in the healthcare space and not just putting out another loom product.
And it’s signing if you’re a customer that potentially wants to use Volva AI when we launch, signing up to the mailing list at volvaai. co. submitting that, that’s, all of those things really help to follow us along the journey to get funding to make the policy changes that we want to see and the research endeavors that we want to see because I’m first and foremost a physician, secondly a researcher.
I, I defined how many nerves are human, human clitoris and the reason I did that was because Looking at how little research there is in women’s health in comparison to men’s health because I do men’s health research, too. I’m trying to fill in these huge research and clinical questions, too, through BULBA AI.
So if anyone wants to fund us, join us or advocate for us, that is how we do it. Perfect. And for everybody listening, just so you know, we’ll definitely be sure to put the links in the show notes so , you can connect with Dr. Ulloca and speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters and you haven’t done it yet, please Be sure to hit that subscribe button.
This is a daily show, meaning each and every day we’re releasing new episodes, new thought leaders new insight, and hopefully new inspiration for your journey. And again, hit that subscribe button and Dr. Loco again, thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you for having me.