Former Drawbridge Health CEO Launches Manifold Health AI at JPM to Build the First Digital Health Index Twin for Chronic Disease

SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 13, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Manifold Health AI today announced its launch at JPM Healthcare Week and the GMT MedTech Symposium, unveiling a first-to-market platform that combines a novel, precision-designed blood test with an AI-driven Digital Health Index Twin to translate biological data into financial risk intelligence for healthcare infrastructure. The announcement was delivered by Manifold's Founder and CEO Jerome Scelza.

Manifold Health AI was created after identifying a fundamental limitation in the at-home diagnostics market: while self-administered blood collection technology is now exceptional, devices alone do not scale without a sufficiently large and economically aligned use case. "Blood collection was never the bottleneck," said Mr. Scelza. "The real issue is that precision wellness and prevention had no financial utility inside the existing healthcare system. Most Americans with chronic disease aren't paying out of pocket, so consumer health models miss the population driving risk. We built Manifold to realign incentives by demonstrating to health plans, employers, and underwriters that frequent, targeted bloodwork lowers risk and improves outcomes. Once biology becomes economically measurable, standardized and actionable, access will follow, and cash-pay healthcare can trickledown."

Manifold Health AI's Mission and Vision
Manifold Health AI's core innovation is a proprietary, blood-based risk assessment designed to identify high-cost health events before they appear in claims data. Rather than relying on surveys or historical claims, Manifold starts with objective biological signals and maps them directly to real financial outcomes—producing a standardized individual-level risk score, similar to a FICO credit score, that enables forward-looking health risk forecasting.

For decades, healthcare risk modeling has been built on CPT and ICD codes optimized for reimbursement rather than clinical accuracy. As a result, most forecasting is backward-looking, reactive, and structurally misaligned with prevention, leading to rising costs and worsening population health year over year. "Trying to predict the future of health using distorted historical claims data is fundamentally flawed," the founder added. "We asked what data would matter most if you stripped healthcare back to first principles and looked at it through the lens of what's the first step the provider would use directly to triage this patient. The answer is bloodwork."

Early Data Reveals Widespread Undetected Risk
In a 500-person pilot study with a manufacturing workforce in southern Mississippi, Manifold Health AI found that 81% of participants had at least three biomarkers out of range, with an overall moderate-to-high risk profile that had gone previously undetected. This population—representing nearly 76% of Americans—stands in stark contrast to the typical consumer wellness demographic, where blood results often return "all normal" and actionable insights are limited. "This is what America actually looks like," said the founder. "This is the population the consumer health and wellness industry doesn't see from inside an Equinox locker room. That's who we're building for."

By demonstrating that early screening, continuous monitoring, and escalation detection in chronic disease populations have measurable financial value, Manifold Health AI enables healthcare infrastructure players—payers, employers, and risk bearers—to deploy precision health interventions at scale.

The company's long-term vision is to serve as a connective layer between biology and finance. By aligning economic incentives with biological risk, they will enable preventive care to reach the populations that need it most, not just those who can afford it. Manifold Health AI applies the most advanced tools in longevity and precision wellness—including biological age clocks, next-generation diagnostics, multi-omics technologies, and continuous risk monitoring—to populations where earlier detection and proactive intervention can materially improve outcomes. This focus is especially relevant for individuals with undiagnosed or unmanaged chronic disease who are typically excluded from consumer health and wellness models.

Manifold Health AI is privately debuting its platform this week at JPM Healthcare Week and the GMT MedTech Symposium, a closed-door gathering of family offices, investors, and operators focused on the next generation of healthcare infrastructure. The announcement was delivered just six days after the FDA indicated that it would relax oversight on wearables and AI-enabled devices.

Jerome Scelza is a Johns Hopkins–trained biomedical engineer and computer scientist, and a serial healthtech entrepreneur with over a decade of experience founding and leading venture-backed companies across diagnostics, medical devices, and health data infrastructure. He previously served as CEO of Drawbridge Health, where he led the development and commercialization of the only FDA-cleared, over-the-counter, self-administered blood sampling device that helped establish at-home blood testing as a clinical category. He is the founder and CEO of Manifold Health AI, where he is focused on bridging biological data and financial risk modeling to expand access to proactive, precision healthcare. To stay informed about Manifold Health AI visit https://www.manifoldhealth.ai

About Manifold Health AI
Manifold Health AI is a health intelligence company building the first to market financial risk model based on human biology. The company flagship product uses a proprietary, blood-based assessment to identify undetected health risk and predict downstream medical claims before they appear in historical data, enabling earlier intervention and proactive care. By bridging objective biological signals with real-world financial outcomes, Manifold Health AI helps healthcare infrastructure players—payers, employers, and risk bearers—deploy precision health tools at scale, expanding access to populations traditionally overlooked by consumer wellness and longevity platforms. To learn more please visit https://www.manifoldhealth.ai

SOURCE Manifold Health