My name is Koya and I'm the co-founder and CEO of Health Director. Health Director as it exists today is the latest expression of a 20-something year journey of dedication, integrity and vision. And a fair amount of making lemonade out of lemons...

In 1988 Mark Schauss was looking at the blood test results of a coworker. He could tell she had cancer, even though she didn't get the diagnosis for another year. What he saw was the disease pattern in her raw lab data.

As is often the case with new ideas, what started out as Mark's intuitive pattern recognition evolved into enormous excel spreadsheets. Then Mark's friend Tim Gary offered to transform those spreadsheets into a semi automated software platform.

A few years later Mark was told that his 3 year daughter had a progressive form of epilepsy and likely would be dead before her 12^th birthday. That reignited his passion and commitment to understand how biochemical pattern analysis could be used as a valuable tool in the healing process.

As of this writing, Ms. Tasya still has her challenges, but she is a healthy 14 year old freshman, taking normal classes at a normal high school.

By 1998 the original software was reaching the limits of the platform on which it was built.  So Mark and Tim, together with Alan Tiras and team, sat down to map out everything they'd love to do with the technology but couldn't. That was the start of the original healthdirector.com.

Millions of dollars and tens of thousands of man hours later, healthdirector.com went live with its new web-based platform and Assessment Engine. Then the dotcom sell-off hit the stock market in 2000-2001. healthdirector.com ran out of funding and eventually had to shut down. Everyone went back to their "day jobs".

In 2008 I met with Alan to see if he would be my attorney for a new business I was starting. After that initial meeting he emailed to say he had a technology that might fit it with what I was planning.

I had recently left a biofeedback technology company and was concerned that his technology sounded like another form of what I didn't want. Fortunately we met again, and I realized healthdirector.com's Assessment Engine was exactly what I was looking for:

• It holds the promise of pragmatic, cost-effective personalized health care because each profile is based on the unique biochemistry of each individual
• It  has mass market potential because it is driven by the data from widely available lab tests
• It could stand up to scrutiny because every aspect of it was evidence-based
• It could be a tool to empower people that want to "own" their health care because with it we can help people appreciate and understand their unique biochemistry and health options
• It could objectively track progress so people, and healthcare providers, could measure if their treatment plans were working.

Done. In August of 2009 we officially formed the new Health Director, and in November of 2009 we went live with our Bio-Clarity^TM family of health profiles.

So what drives us today?

We are each passionately committed to empowering people to understand and own their health care. We each have our different "why", but we share the same passion and commitment.

In May of 2000 they found my first "nodule". What kind of word is nodule? No one bothered to call it a tumor. 3 specialists later and they skipped straight to the "C word": cancer.

I was 27.

HD commitment:

Communicate in easy to understand language and don't sugar coat what is. It does no one a service to hide the truth. Our goal is that anyone can explain their profile to their tired, stressed out spouse after 2 glasses of wine.

They found another tumor a couple of years later. That second time I knew enough that I didn't need to rush into surgery or radiation. I met with a wonderful acupuncturist who told me:

Your body is an environment. And tumors can't survive in a healthy environment. So we are not going to focus on the tumor. We're going to make sure your body becomes a healthy environment.

HD commitment:

Our bodies are an environment. And a healthy environment is reflected in a balanced biochemistry.

So help people understand their imbalances and what specifically they can do to bring them back into balance.

No drama. No scary words. Just balance and imbalance.

It wasn't until I truly took responsibility for my health with the second tumor, that I began to experience real well being. I was honestly healthier at 35 than at 18. How cool is that?!

HD commitment:

Be a tool to empower people who truly want to "own" their health care. We can all be healthier in 10 years than we are today...

Stay tuned as we create the next chapter of the HD story!