Mette Dyhrberg is the Founder & CEO of Mymee, a specialized care and support program for people with rheumatic autoimmune diseases and long COVID. She is a serial entrepreneur who has and continues to constantly challenge the status quo and push for more innovative ways to solve problems and seek solutions. Being brought up in Europe and living across the west and east coasts in the US has significantly influenced her leadership abilities. Mette is also a recognized authority on autoimmune issues and regularly speaks on rethinking healthcare and autoimmunity at industry events.
The Making of an Entrepreneur
By age three, Mette was an entrepreneur in the making. At every turn, she looked for business opportunities, starting with charging her grandfather for lunches she “cooked” on a wooden toy stove. Understanding the importance of repeat customers, Mette even returned her grandfather’s coins ahead of his lunch purchase the next day.
In high school, Mette started a business by trying to figure out how to make international travel more affordable for her peers. Soon enough, she coordinated trips for her high school friends to different countries. She then delved into organizing large concerts from there.
During college, Mette sold her first company— a company where she realized she needed leadership experience to find employment after completing her degree. She built an early iteration of an on-demand home services company, “matching” families with employees with the skills for the work required. The business’s framework was an earlier example of her use of “offline algorithms” – identifying patterns to solve problems – even pre-Mymee.
In the end, she sold the company, having grown it in size to 160 employees in just three years. After that, Mette went on to build numerous companies which made a meaningful impact on people’s lives.
Taking Matters into Own Hands
At 14, Mette was first diagnosed with an autoimmune disease that grew to six autoimmune disease diagnoses as the years progressed. It became evident that traditional healthcare had limited answers to more complex situations like hers. This experience led Mette to tackle her chronic autoimmune health issues on her own. Through her college training, she became an economist with a knack for finding patterns in data which later spilled into her personal life.
Soon, Mette began tracking her daily food intake, flares, and as many factors from her everyday life as possible using an Excel spreadsheet. Over time, she could connect the dots to identify specific triggers causing her to feel worse. “Essentially, I had hacked my own health by approaching my autoimmune disease symptoms systematically,” shares Mette. “Since then, I have experienced over a decade of remission and created Mymee to help others experience symptom improvement and management by analyzing their own data.”
What Sets Mymee Apart from Other Market Competitors?
Established in 2017, Mymee pioneers self-evidence-based research for people with mild to severe rheumatic symptoms associated with diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, psoriatic arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, multiple sclerosis, and long COVID.
What makes Mymee unique is its program’s ability to provide clinically significant symptom improvement. Mymee helps people collect and analyze their personal data to find their specific trigger-symptom correlations. “Our self-evidence data platform makes it possible to improve patients’ symptoms by finding atypical triggers hidden in their food and environment,” explains Mette. As a result, around 79% of Mymee clients feel improvement in their symptoms within the first eight sessions.
Specialized Tools and Support for Personalized Patient Experiences
Mymee’s specialized tools and support services are designed to put autoimmune patients first. Its dedicated care team comprises clinicians and specialized autoimmune health and nutrition coaches with personal experience addressing their autoimmune disease symptoms. Their approach towards clients is always empathetic, ensuring they feel seen, heard, and supported. Secondly, the client determines the timeline to move forward in the program. Coaches work to move at the client’s own pace and respect their limitations and desires when suggesting or helping them make incremental behavior or diet changes.
Furthermore, Mymee recognizes that there is no “one size fits all” approach to addressing autoimmune symptoms and that each client’s disease experience and personal triggers are unique. The program’s intuitive mobile app was designed to simplify the generation of data in order to test and identify individualized trigger-symptom correlations. In-app tracking tags are tailored to each client. The customization means clients can quickly note their personal preferences (like coffee with almond milk and Stevia), their water intake (down to the ounces in their favorite water bottle), and their specific symptom experience (burning pain versus shooting).
The app has the option to take and log photos, thereby helping clients to log their meals in real-time. Mymee’s rigorous data analysis dashboard supports coaches on the backend in their work to find client triggers and provide personalized guidance in one-on-one sessions. Coaches are available to answer questions directly or provide support through unlimited in-app messaging. Not to mention, Mette and her team are constantly adding new features to increase ease of use for clients and improve their experience at every step.
A Beneficial Acquisition
Recently, Mymee acquired Breakthrough Health. The addition has been meaningful to the company in multiple ways. Breakthrough Health created Emilyn, the leading mobile application for people with multiple sclerosis. In a short time, Emilyn achieved five stars, became the #1 app in both the Apple and Google app stores, and has over 20,000 users, allowing for rich consumer research opportunities.
In addition to deeper insight into the unique needs of MS patients, Mymee gained Breakthrough Health’s experienced leadership to help scale its personalized health platform and research. Breakthrough understands the importance of creating great mobile products and ease of use for health consumers struggling with frequent autoimmune symptoms, along with the nuances required for tracking what’s important to them. In all, the team brings its deep expertise in personalization, privacy, security, modular architecture, human-centered design, and scalability, proving as a valuable addition to Mymee.
Growth by Leaps & Bounds
Mymee’s progress and success have been underscored through the clinical research that Mette and her team have invested in over the past decade focused on autoimmune triggers, symptoms, and personalized interventions. In addition, Mymee has gained trusted partners, including Mount Sinai Hospital; expanded its research to include long COVID; and diversified its patent and trademark portfolio, which continues to grow through nonstop innovative thinking. Similarly, Mymee’s health coaches continue to deepen their expertise through well-respected certifications and steady growth in client sessions.
Encouraging Employee Autonomy at Work
According to Mette, the best way to motivate team members is to allow them autonomy. She also suggests that leaders must put trust in the people they have chosen to work with and provide them the tools and freedom to apply their talents as experts in their area.
Breakthrough Moments during the Entrepreneurial Journey
Prior to founding Mymee, Mette formed a company that enhanced the motor skills of young children. The company’s service provided a tangible improvement in physical abilities for its tiny clients. Therefore, being able to impact her clients’ lives is a special milestone for Mette.
Likewise, the relationships Mette has formed at Mymee and other companies are invaluable to her. She has had the opportunity to work alongside mission-driven, imaginative people who are equally as passionate about disrupting the status quo and doing what was considered impossible. Cultivating meaningful relationships with her team and partners is critical to Mette’s success.
A Day in the Life of a Multi-talented Leader
Mette’s work schedule is full of variety. Being a natural problem-solver, her love of complex opportunities makes work feel much less like work to her. She is also someone who can mentally disconnect between work and her personal life, pause from a challenging day, meet with friends, and return straight away to the task at hand. This separation allows her to keep stress levels in check and remain calm. “If you’re able to take a break and truly let go, you can recharge your batteries and be better at handling what’s next at work,” reveals Mette.
Working Towards the Ultimate Goal
“The ultimate goal for Mymee is for our program to become standard care for rheumatologists as they help their patients. Of course, this is ambitious – but we believe it can happen,” reveals Mette. To turn this goal into reality, Mette and her team are working to put the steps into place to continue to scale, including finding the right talent, empowering the team, and acquiring additional resources and funding.
For More Info: https://www.mymee.com/