Elya Lane means it when she says her app, Corra Health, literally saved her life.
Throughout her late teens and early twenties, Lane struggled with chronic pain and health issues. Well into adulthood, her doctors continuously called it “growing pains.” She had persistent infections that landed her in the emergency room. She was on full strength daily antibiotics for years and there was a huge concern she was developing antibiotic resistance. Her health continued to decline, and she honestly feared her two young kids might grow up without a mother.
It took well over a decade to get a proper diagnosis for the rare Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. As is common for people struggling with chronic illness, some days would be good. Other days she struggled to get out of bed. She tried every symptom tracker and health app out there to try to get insights into what triggered her pain and infections. But nothing on the market offered an easy way to track all aspects of her health – from nutrition to fitness to the daily symptoms.
“I was fatigued, exhausted, and in pain. I didn’t have the energy I needed to easily input data [into an app],” she said. And even when data was imported into an app, she realized she struggled to get any actionable insights into what all her health data actually meant.
Get To Know Corra
With her own intense tracking, Lane said she was able to “know exactly what to do to help my body get back on track.” That led her to start Corra Health to help others managing chronic conditions find “holistic,” “accurate and impactful” health details.
The app is designed to be a hyper personalized health log and provide insights based on an individual user’s tracking needs. Corra can start providing actionable insights after at least 35 days of data is collected.
“The end result is like having a trained medical statistician constantly analyzing, and reassessing your lifestyle to try and pinpoint the cause of your symptoms. It is the ultimate in personalized medicine,” Simeon Wilson, Corra’s Chief Data Scientist, explained to Hypepotamus.
A Personal Health Journey
Lane has had an entrepreneurial spirit from a young age. She has fond memories selling candy bars, handmade dolls, and makeup in elementary and middle school. She learned early on that she loved sales and the process of building companies.
“Everything I touched when I was little, I immediately started thinking about how to make it a business,” she told Hypepotamus.
She launched her own tutoring business and arts center in Ventura County, California. But serving the chronically ill population through Corra is personal to Lane. She said that tracking her symptoms through the early versions of Corra helped her gain important insights into her health and stay off of daily antibiotics for nearly the last two years.
“My app genuinely saved my life,” she told Hypepotamus.
Corra, short for correlation, is looking to change the rather crowded health tracking space.
“[People] are not lacking in information in any way. There are more health trackers out there than you can shake a stick at,” Lane added. “What we don’t have is the ability to receive insight about that data or to collect all that data. And that’s what we are doing with Corra.”
Building Corra In ATL
While Corra is a Southern California-based company, the team is currently in Atlanta this year. After applying to Techstars programs around the country “more times than [she] could count,” Lane was accepted into Techstar Atlanta’s 2024 cohort.
The opportunity meant moving her family – husband, two kids, and two dogs – to Georgia earlier this year. Over just a few weeks, she told Hypepotamus that she’s been particularly impressed with Atlanta’s startup culture.
“Everyone’s so focused on building each other up and supporting one another,” she said.
Lane officially founded Corra in 2020. As a non-technical co-founder, Lane has assembled an impressive team of executives around her. Simeon Wilson joined as the startup’s Chief Data Scientist, Aradhna Khivesara as Executive Vice President of Product, Pratik Khivesara as Head of Engineering, and Doug Lerch as a strategic advisor.
With the help of Techstars, the Corra team is ready to help build the future of health.
“We’re going to see a revolution and a shift towards personalized medicine. It’s inevitable,” Lane added.
