With both of his parents being physicians, Ulupreneur Anuj Khandelwal grew up thinking medicine was his path. Orthopedics appealed to him initially, as he played water polo as a youngster and had his fair share of underwater injuries. But Anuj saw that diabetes was the scourge of his family; he felt a sense of personal responsibility to try and innovate something that could help those plagued by the chronic disease.
Anuj earned a BS in mechanical engineering with a concentration in electrical engineering and computer science at MIT. He interned and then worked at Amazon’s drone division Prime Air, designing test machines for their propulsion system. But he really wanted to design medical devices, and with that in mind went to Stanford and earned a master’s in mechanical engineering. He was inspired by the Stanford Biodesign Program. He and his roommate and co-founder Eric Dahlseng decided they wanted to design something that would be really impactful for in-home health—and address a problem they could solve at scale. They launched Empo Health in 2020, an in-home health monitoring system designed specifically for diabetics.
Anuj sat down with us to describe how a simple bathroom scale can help prevent diabetic foot ulcers, which occur more often in disadvantaged populations.
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The dream for Anuj and Eric is to change health monitoring by building a suite of in-home health products—not only for patients with diabetes, but also for those with other chronic diseases. Their goal is to make devices that are easy to use and allow patients to access data at any time make them feel comfortable and more empowered.
