Gabriella RestrepoInteresting fact: Passionate about everything from design and tech to literature and music, João released an EP on Spotify and is now working to launch his own iOS app in just a few weeks.
TL;DR
Introducing our Product Designer, João Araújo. João is an extraordinary product designer with years of experience in health-tech from the UK and India. He has worked on innovative healthcare projects aimed at improving patient outcomes, all while balancing an array of interests.
What did you do before Livv?
I studied economics in Portugal before doing a year in design. After that, I made the move to London to kickstart my career. I became a product designer for Babylon Health and later at a startup called Second Nature. There, I often found myself as the sole product designer, working on a product aimed at helping people reverse diabetes and lose weight.
How did you become interested in health-tech and what led you to Livv Health?
When I moved to London in 2019, healthcare wasn’t initially on my radar. My introduction to the field came somewhat unexpectedly after I was laid off from my first job due to funding issues. I soon joined Babylon, where Sverre and Chris also worked, which became my introduction to healthcare. Eventually, I connected with Sverre through a Babylon alumni channel as he was looking for a Product Designer. The opportunity at Livv caught my eye, especially since I was planning a move to India and needed a remote role. That’s how I ended up here at Livv, continuing my six-year-long journey working in healthcare.
Why do you believe in Livv Health, and what is the problem we are solving?
I believe there are significant challenges when gathering and managing health data. One of the primary issues is helping people trust a platform to securely host their data and easily share it with their doctors. This is one of the immediate problems we're tackling at Livv—making it simple for users to collect and store their health information in a trustworthy place and then easily share it with healthcare providers.
Another challenge we're addressing is transforming static health data into meaningful insights for users and making it more accessible for doctors. Health data is often scattered across multiple documents from various sources, making it difficult to interact with or understand. We're developing a system that integrates these disparate sources into a cohesive, interactive platform, enabling users and doctors to engage with their data more meaningfully and effectively. One of the upcoming features, for instance, will automatically organize documents into topics, eliminating the need for manual sorting. Users simply upload their documents, and our system handles the rest, making the data more dynamic and easier to manage for both patients and healthcare providers.
Interestingly, my own experiences have provided valuable insights into how our product functions in various real-world settings. My friends even joke that every time I visit India, I end up doing 'hospital tourism' because of a string of bad luck that has taken me to various hospitals in Mumbai and Bangalore. For instance, I recently visited a physiotherapist who didn’t have a computer, so I had to show her the documents on my phone. This highlighted the need for our system to be flexible, allowing doctors to interact with patient data even in less conventional settings.
Hobbies outside the office?
My idea of downtime is spending hours at a café with a good book. I love reading about history, both non-fiction and historical fiction. Since I moved to India, I have been deep into India’s history, and I am currently reading a book on copper-cobalt belts in Africa.
I’m also passionate about music—I’ve even released an EP on Spotify and am learning to produce music. I’ve been learning Hindi with a tutor for the past two years and have been really enjoying the learning process. Lastly, I love tech and design. I’m actually building an iOS app on the side using AI, which I hope to launch soon. The app helps me coordinate calls with different people across different time zones, a project born out of my own need.
If you could have dinner with any historical figure, who would it be and why?
I’d love to have dinner with Johnny Cash. While he might not be a traditional historical figure, his influence on music and his life story fascinates me. I’d like the opportunity to learn more about his experiences firsthand and ask him random, casual questions.
Lastly, what do you envision the healthcare system will look like in the future?
I believe that AI will play an increasingly integrated role in healthcare, streamlining processes that are currently cumbersome. Take, for instance, the triaging system in hospitals. Today, when you visit an emergency service, you will likely receive a bracelet—red, amber, or green—based on the severity of your condition. This process could easily be automated with AI, making it more efficient.
AI will also change how we use health data. Just like cobalt, once mainly used for coloring, is now essential for batteries, health data will become more valuable as AI helps us understand and use it in new ways. This could make healthcare systems much more effective.
But there’s a catch. We must be careful not to create tools that actually make doctors' jobs harder. It’s easy to add new features to healthcare software, but that can lead to systems that are too complicated and take away from patient care. For example, if we build a feature that takes five minutes to use, but a doctor only has ten minutes with a patient, that’s not helpful.
We’ve seen this happen ourselves. We thought a new note-taking feature for doctors would be great, but they told us they already have to use other software for legal reasons. Adding another tool just gives them more work.
The key is understanding what doctors really need and making sure new tools fit into their workflow rather than complicating it. Otherwise, even well-intentioned solutions can end up making things worse.
Download the app in App Store or Google Play.