Fitt Insider 323. Dr. Muthu Alagappan, Founder & CEO of Counsel Health
Jan 26, 2026
Dr. Muthu Alagappan, an internal medicine physician and AI researcher who founded Counsel Health, builds AI-native primary care that blends medical AI with licensed clinicians. He discusses messaging-based longitudinal care. Topics include AI-led history taking and seamless handoffs to doctors. They debate where AI should act versus humans and how to scale accessible, lower-cost personalized medicine.
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Doctor In Your Pocket Messaging Care
- Counsel Health delivers AI-native primary care via messaging that starts with medical AI history-taking and hands off to human doctors when needed.
- The platform combines longitudinal care, prescriptions, labs, and referrals within a single chat experience.
Owning The Medical Practice
- Council operates its own 50-state medical practice so it controls liability and can turn answers into actions like prescriptions and referrals.
- Employed clinicians work inside a clinician cockpit that lets them approve AI-suggested plans in a click, boosting throughput to 15–20 patients/hour.
When AI Hands Off To Humans
- Counsel chooses doctor involvement either for regulatory requirements or when AI lacks confidence for complex multi-step reasoning.
- Over time they expect both regulation and model performance to enable more AI-handled turns with humans in the loop when needed.