Major heart surgery and chronic pain left Zach Gotlib craving meaningful connection with people who could relate what he was going through. He tells Health Tech World about the ‘selfish’ reasons behind the creation of SelfiHealth, an app that tackles social isolation through peer-to-peer health support.
Born with a congenital heart defect, Zach Gotlib was just 12-years-old when doctors told him he would need open heart surgery one day.
“As I progressed through high school I always knew I was a little different, but I didn’t want to be seen as the ‘heart kid’,” he says.
“It had a big impact on me from an emotional and physical perspective. You have no idea what to do, there’s no other 12 year olds in your town who need open heart surgery. I became extremely depressed and afraid.”
After having surgery to replace a valve on his heart at the age of 20, Zach describes getting a ‘second lease of life’.
“The reality is the surgery was the best thing that ever happened to me,” he continues.
“I was given such an appreciation for life. It gave me perspective and an understanding that things could always be worse. I was so determined to get my life back and start doing the things that I wasn’t able to do.”
He moved to New York to go to law school, got a job at a top law firm and started volunteering for the American Heart Association and sharing his story. In 2017, he was named their ‘Survivor of the Year’. For the first time in his life, Zach says, he was speaking to people who had been on a similar journey to him.
It was while running marathons to raise money for the charity, that he ended up with a hip injury that resulted in several failed surgeries, leaving him living with chronic pain for the last six years.
Zach Gotlib, co-founder of Selfihealth
“It brought me full circle,” says Zach.
“Here I was – with a completely different condition – but I again felt alone, confused and scared. So I did what any person does, I went to Google.
He continues: “I would post in Facebook groups and online forums and get responses from 85-year-olds, telling me about their cats and dogs and political beliefs. That had the opposite effect, I felt like the only 30-year-old in the world with these issues. I realised very quickly that there hasn’t been much investment in our most powerful resource, human connection, as it relates to health.”
This was the chain of events that led to the creation of
