Why I Built Nova
One doctor's visit. Three prescriptions. Zero answers. That was the beginning.
It was the middle of my work day. I’d scheduled this call weeks ago; my blood results were finally in and I was ready for some real answers. I remember rushing to give my three year old a handful of cheese puffs just so I could sneak into a quiet room in time. I was excited, but a little anxious. I actually thought this was going to be the call that finally made sense of everything I’d been feeling.
For over six months I’d been running on empty and just...pushing through. The way you do when you’re a mom, when there’s always something more urgent than taking care of yourself. I’d finally made the time to do something about it. The hardest parts to live with every day were the sleep; not only the falling asleep part, but also the never actually feeling rested no matter how many hours I got; the mood swings that I couldn’t always explain, and the brain fog. My memory just wasn’t there. I’d walk into a room and forget why. I’d lose my train of thought mid-sentence, or I’d stutter trying to get a word out. I work at a top data cloud company and would feel like the most dumb person in the room when I was doing normal every day tasks because my brain wasn’t functioning like it did years prior. It was taking a real, emotional toll and I knew something wasn’t right.
The doctor went through my results and told me almost everything looked normal. My Vitamin D and Ferritin was low, which isn’t unusual in most people. And I wasn’t “close enough” to perimenopause to be concerned about it. Then came the prescriptions. An SSRI, birth control, and a sleep sedative. I sat there with this frozen half smile on my face, nodding along like I was following her, like I agreed; however, inside I was raging. I was just given “band aids”.
No one is looking for the root cause. This is just typical American healthcare.
The call ended and I wanted to cry. Nothing about it made sense to me. The SSRI bothered me the most. Everyone knows SSRIs come with a laundry list of side effects - you don’t just hand those out willy nilly to someone who came to you exhausted and looking for answers. I wasn’t depressed. I was overwhelmed. There’s a difference. Instead of asking me more about my daily life, my stress levels, my history, and instead of ordering more tests or exploring other avenues, the doctor went straight for the prescriptions. The birth control felt like hormone suppression dressed up as a solution. The sleep sedative felt like being told to just stop noticing the problem. None of it was looking for a root cause. All of this was managing symptoms of something nobody bothered to actually diagnose.
When my results came in before I even got on the call with the doctor, the very first thing I saw was my B12, and it was flagged in red. Extremely high. Now, I’m not a medical professional, but I know enough to know that most people are deficient in B12. I never in my life heard of someone having too much of it and I wasn’t sitting at home eating foods high in B12. I was very curious and almost excited to hear what the doctor was going to say about that one…but it was never brought up. Not once. And here’s the part that still gets me: I didn’t ask. I wanted to, but I was scared of looking stupid for bringing up something the doctor skipped over. Maybe I was missing something obvious? So I stayed quiet. I hung up the phone with that red flag sitting in the back of my mind and no explanation for it whatsoever.
After the call I just sat there. Defeated and angry at the same time. I stared out the window thinking if this system isn’t going to help me, what else can I do to help myself? I was deep in thought when my three year old came running through the door, looked right at me and said “mommy, everything will be okay, don’t be sad.”
I hugged her and I held her for a long moment. My sweet pooter.
Then it hit me. I cannot be the only person feeling this way. There are millions of people sitting in front of screens, or in waiting rooms, or staring out windows just like me: defeated, dismissed, and left to figure it out on their own. And I thought - someone needs to do something about this. Someone needs to give people their power back. Someone needs to help them take control of their own health, have the upper hand, and stop waiting for a broken system to fix itself.
I decided that someone was going to be me.
I reached out to a holistic doctor and asked what else could be done here? They told me I needed more biomarker testing than the basic panels that had been ordered. That to find the root cause, you have to go deeper. And honestly? My reaction was “I already knew this.” I follow holistic and functional medicine doctors on social media (don’t get me wrong, I do follow medical doctors as well, I’m not bias). I read the sources they post and these are real, legitimate sources of the same caliber as anything in conventional medicine. I had a feeling more testing was needed; I just needed someone who actually works in this space to confirm it.
That’s the part that frustrates me most. It shouldn’t be this hard. Holistic medicine and conventional medicine shouldn’t be on opposite teams pointing fingers at each other, competing for credibility, leaving the rest of us caught in the middle trying to sort through the noise. Everyone should be collaborating. The divisiveness in healthcare isn’t just annoying; it’s overwhelming for regular people like me who are just trying to get answers. We’re not asking for much. We just want someone to look.
When I think about who I’m building this for, I think about myself. I think about my parents. My relatives. My friends. I think about the future health of my three children. I think about every person who has ever sat in that same defeated silence after a call with a doctor who had twelve minutes for them and a script ready to go.
The truth is, everyone is dealing with some kind of health issue, whether they know it yet or not. Most of us are just reacting. Something goes wrong, we seek help, we get a band aid, we move on until the next thing goes wrong. We never get ahead of it.
That’s what I want to change. I want people to understand where their health actually stands right now. I want them to have real options, whether that’s conventional medicine, holistic approaches, or both working together. I want them to walk into any doctor’s appointment with their data already laid out, clear and organized, so nothing gets missed and nothing gets ignored. And I want them to be able to see where their health might be heading so they can stop being reactive and start being proactive. Enable them to take charge so they can feel empowered in a system that has spent a long time making them feel anything but.
What I haven't mentioned yet is that I have the background to understand how to build this. I have a degree in Software Engineering and a Master's in Predictive Analytics with a focus on Data Modeling and Deep Learning from Northwestern University. I've spent over a decade working at the intersection of data, technology, and product. I understand how predictive models work, how health data should be structured, and how systems like this need to be architected to actually serve people, not profit from them. I'm not building this alone and I will never claim to be the smartest person in the room (I want to listen and learn from all the smart people!), but I know what needs to be built. And I know why it matters.
Then something amazing happened: I started building Nova.
Not because I had all the answers. But because I was tired of waiting for someone else to fix something that was clearly broken.
Here’s how I describe it when someone asks me what Nova is: it’s the start of something big. A real change in a broken system not led by a pharmaceutical company, not owned by a corporation, not controlled by a government agency. Led by people like you and your neighbors. Everyday people who are done being dismissed and ready to take their health into their own hands.
Nova is a personalized health intelligence platform built on real data from real people. It starts with the basics: sleep, nutrition, movement, hydration, supplements, the wellness tools you already own. And it grows with you, integrating bloodwork, biomarkers, and predictive insights that help you understand not just where your health is today, but where it could be heading. My hope is that you can get ahead of it instead of just reacting to it.
We are not the same. Not one of us. Our genetics are different, our environments are different, our histories are different, our bodies are different. Why are we all being handed the same solutions? Individualized care isn’t a luxury, it’s the only thing that makes sense. And it’s long overdue.
Nothing like this has ever been built before. Not like this. Not owned by the people who actually use it. Not driven by the collective intelligence of everyday consumers contributing their real health data to something bigger than themselves.
That’s Nova. It’s not mine. It’s ours.
I’m building this in public and I want to be clear about why because transparency is everything to me. I don’t trust corporations with my health. I don’t trust pharmaceutical companies with my health. I don’t trust government agencies with my health. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think I’m alone in that. These systems have spent decades putting money first and consumers last, hiding what’s inconvenient, and controlling the narrative. I refuse to be that.
Everything about how Nova grows and how your data is used will be visible. No hidden agenda, just honesty.
But I also need to be real with you…I cannot do this alone. I need your help. I need your data, your daily life, your health story. This will help enable us to find the patterns that none of us can see individually but all of us can see together. Real people. Real lifestyles. Real data. That’s what creates real change.
We’ve been talking about fixing healthcare for a long time. Complaining about it even longer. Nothing changes because nothing starts. So let’s start. Right now. Together. Because when enough real people contribute their real health data to one transparent platform, patterns will surface that nobody, not big pharma, not the government, not any corporation, will be able to ignore.
That’s the power we’re building here, and it begins with you taking one first step.
If you’ve ever ended a virtual visit or walked out of a doctor’s office feeling unseen, this is for you. If you’ve ever been handed a prescription instead of an answer, this is for you. If you’re tired of a system that treats you like a statistic instead of a person, this is for you.
Here’s what I’m asking you to do. Join us. Start recording your health story: what you eat, what you drink, how much water you’re getting, how you feel throughout the day, how you slept, how you moved your body. The small stuff. The daily stuff. The stuff that feels ordinary but is actually the most powerful data in the world when it comes from enough real people living real lives.
This only works if you’re in it with me. The more people who show up, the more patterns surface, the louder our collective voice becomes, and the harder it gets for anyone to ignore us.
Nova is just getting started. And so are we.
I believe we are about to make our little corner of the world a whole lot better, together. And the day I get to meet you, I’m going to hug you and say thank you. Because you didn’t just download an app, you helped change something that needed changing for a very long time.
— Crystal, Founder of Nova
Follow along. Share this with someone who needs to read it. Sign up at getnova.health. And if this is your story too — tell me in the comments. I want to hear every word.