Millie
In this Q&A, you’ll hear from Sarah Reynolds, co-founder & CTO of Millie, a hybrid maternity clinic. Sarah shares how care gaps during her pregnancy led to developing comprehensive support teams for parents. Plus, she explains how a design-driven patient experience raises the standard.
Can you tell us about what you’re working on at Millie?
Sarah Reynolds: Millie is a modern maternity clinic providing expecting parents with a holistic approach to pregnancy care every step of the way.
With our first brick-and-mortar location in Berkeley, CA, Millie provides in-person services for those in the area while offering digital aid to patients nationwide, accepting most major insurance plans, including Medicaid.
The Millie app grants patients access to educational resources, patient monitoring, smart personalization, 24/7 support, and more. Leveraging AI, Millie analyzes health data to identify risk factors and predict complications, empowering providers to tailor personalized care plans.
What led you to pursue this opportunity?
SR: [CEO] Anu Sharma and I were pregnant at the same time, having our children just two weeks apart. Along the way, we both saw massive opportunities to improve how maternity care is delivered in the US.
We saw firsthand how lack of support outside typical surface-level maternity care wasn’t enough. Most of pregnancy happens between visits, and parents need care long after the baby comes home.
Meanwhile, Anu’s midwife [co-founder] Talia Borgo brought a truly amazing combination of warmth, clinical acumen, and all-around savvy.
We believe that should always be the standard of care for mothers and their children.
How did you turn your idea into a company?
SR: Anu had a strong background in the business/policy side of health, along with her tenacity and vision. And my technical skills complemented those of Anu and Talia.
I was one of the first few engineers who prioritized building for B2B2C at Omada Health, conceptualizing a design-driven patient experience and building tools to make implementation (eligibility, billing, reporting) streamlined and less error-prone than many of the initial “manual” approaches to these concerns.
That experience helped seed my thinking on our mobile-first patient experience, including health scans, curriculum, guide and group messaging, and device integrations, which are all presented in the modernized Millie app.
Through gathering input from patients, families, midwives, OB-GYNs, and health systems, the Millie care model—a modern maternity clinic with culturally competent care extended through technology—transformed from a dream scenario into a brick-and-mortar reality. We opened our first clinic in Berkeley in September 2022.
How big can this get?
SR: The maternity market is large, but access to skilled providers is more limited than ever. While there are many existing facilities and providers, they’re not maximizing their potential.
Combining technology with in-person clinical care will enable the successful delivery of our care model to a broken system.
We see this as an opportunity to partner with health systems and grow our customer base by opening more clinics in California, to expand our footprint nationally.
What’s next on the roadmap?
SR: With our first open in Berkeley and additional openings on the horizon in 2024, expansion is top of mind.
We’re aiming to open clinics in suburban “medium-access” markets while also aiming to partner with more Medicaid MCOs.
Millie’s expansion mission is to execute care delivery in these markets with clinical excellence, data-driven decisions, and positive ROI while growing with partner clinics, health systems, and Medicaid.
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