Tampa physician invests in AI-powered preventive medicine app

Dr. Lyda Tymiak Lindell knows what it means to live well. 

Her husband and partner of 24 years, Tampa real estate developer and investor Carl Lindell, made headlines last year with his plan to donate his $130 million estate to local charities upon his death. The money has allowed the Lindells to travel the world, indulge their love of skiing, hiking and underwater photography, build their dream home overlooking Tampa Bay and fill every inch of it with art from the likes of Chihuly, Dali and Lichtenstein. 

But even before she met Carl, Lyda’s passion has always been helping others live well, too — from her many philanthropic ventures to her celebrated career as an ophthalmologist to her latest pursuits in the field of precision longevity medicine. In the last one she is addressing chronic health issues at their root through her private practice, UrBestNow consulting.

It’s her latest venture, a smartphone app that uses a selfie to measure your vitals, that Lindell, 74, says could bring her passion for preventative medicine and living well full circle. 

“I really believe that this new technology will go viral and transform the world,” Lindell says. “I was an ophthalmologist for 30 years, I had a private practice, but I decided I transitioned to longevity medicine to make a real difference in people's everyday lives and overall health and with this new tool the potential to scale is incredibly exciting.”

Lindell and her business partner Alex Edwards, a business consultant and founder of Tampa-based Sustainable Holdings Inc., are investors in the AiMe app. They declined to provide details of the investment, saying terms of their agreement are confidential. They did share, though, that in July Lindell became the first U.S. doctor to offer access to the AiMe app. The app can be downloaded for $16.99 a month through her website, urbestnow.com. Lindell receives remuneration for each download through her proprietary link.

Of the handful of AI-powered facial scanning apps emerging in the market, AiMe is the most complete and accurate direct-to-consumer platform available, Edwards says. It also provides the most advanced comparative analysis for determining predictive risk. 

“She’s been a very active participant in the last six weeks or so as we work through some of the bumps and bruises of launching a new platform,” Edwards says. “AiMe is the ultimate tool that she can provide to her patients or anyone interested in tracking their health with unlimited scans — as many as you want to do every day."

High tech

Developed in Israel, AiMe can track your heart rate, blood pressure, respiratory rate and even blood sugar levels without needles, cuffs or physical contact. It’s one of many facial scanning apps beginning to emerge with the advancement of artificial intelligence and smart phone camera technology. 

Lindell admits it “sounds like hocus pocus." But AiMe and the technology behind it has been proven to have an accuracy rate in the 90th percentile in numerous clinical research studies. The medical process behind the app, remote photoplethysmography, is also backed by the American Heart Association. Still, Lindell completed a three-month course on regenerative AI at MIT to learn more about the science behind the app before lending her endorsement.

The app uses the high-powered sensors already built into today’s smartphones to conduct a 60-second facial scan that detects changes in blood volume below the skin’s surface. It works by tracking the way light reflects off the skin’s surface as blood is pumped through the body with every heartbeat. The app uses the flash on your smartphone’s camera to illuminate the skin and create a reflection that captures your pulse. 

AiMe captures your heart rate, blood pressure, respiratory rate and oxygen saturation, hemoglobin and hemoglobin A1C for average blood glucose, pulse-respiratory quotient, and autonomic nervous system index, which measures average stress levels. The app even gives you a cholesterol evaluation and tells you your heart age. 

“It’s something you can do every day and track over time to start determining what factors in life are affecting your overall health,” Lindell says. “Before we could only track some of these measurements through blood tests, which nobody does that often because you have to go to the doctor and get a referral and pay. Now, this app can give you incredible information in real time with no risk, no pain, no wait, no hassle.”

The scans aren’t diagnostic and should be used for informational purposes only, Lindell says. If you’re wearing makeup during a scan, for example, the app will reflect a medium to low confidence level in its report. Its usefulness is more in the aggregate nature of the data collected, she says. 

And the aggregate, an overall vision of a patient’s state of wellness, is what Lindell has hoped to provide patients throughout her career. 

City life

Lindell always knew she wanted to spend her life fixing problems and making lives better. 

She grew up in New Jersey, the daughter of Ukrainian immigrants who fled the country after World War II with nothing but the clothes on their backs and their education. Her father was an engineer and her mother a pharmacist, sparking young Lyda’s interest in medicine at an early age. 

After earning her bachelor’s degree from Boston University, Lindell received her M.D. from New York’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 1976. When it came time for her medical internship she planned on going to Miami but, the day before she was set to be matched, she decided she wanted to move to Tampa instead. It was still Florida, but seemed smaller and safer than a big city like Miami, she says. It seemed like a place where she would one day raise a family. 

She completed an internship in Internal Medicine and a residency in ophthalmology at the University of South Florida medical school. As a board certified ophthalmologist, she founded Gulfcoast Eye Care in 1980, specializing in cataract and implant surgery. 

“I loved internal medicine but I kept seeing patients with chronic diseases come in, I’d give them medication, tune them up so they would be better for a while, and then a little while later they would come back with the same problem,” Lindell says. “It was something I just thought I couldn’t do for the rest of my life. I wanted to solve the problem and see the result. And when a cataract patient sees for the first time after being blind, well it’s like a miracle.”

New beginnings

In 2003, Lindell opened Timeless MD Spa, offering upper and lower eyelid surgery and non-surgical face rejuvenation. That same year, though, Lindell’s life took an unexpected turn: a severe windsurfing accident left her with multiple pelvic fractures. The long road to recovery was a frustrating one, she says, but opened her eyes to the limits of conventional medicine and further ignited her desire to address chronic health issues at their root. 

She transitioned from her solo practice of ophthalmology to age management medicine in 2005, when she became certified in age management medicine through the Cenegenics Institute in Las Vegas. 

In 2013, she fully retired from her optical practice and completed a fellowship in functional and metabolic medicine at USF Medical School. In 2019 Lindell — at age 69 — opened UrBestNow consulting.

Launching a new career at a time when many would be entering retirement was never a daunting task for Lindell. Her work, she says, is a labor of love that becomes even more of a driving mission in her life with every friend and loved one who dies from a preventable illness like heart disease. 

"There's a real desire in the population to be healthier and a lot of people don't know what to do, but everyone wants a quick fix," she says. "Quick fixes don't exist, but this is as close as you can get to an immediate wakeup call that you need to change your mindset and change your life."