You are merakoi
Over 95% of the world’s population has health problems.1
One in three adults worldwide live with multiple chronic conditions.2
merakoi means co-creating a better future, for us all.
One in three adults worldwide live with multiple chronic conditions.2
merakoi means co-creating a better future, for us all.
1. ScienceDaily, 2015
2. WEForum, 2017
Contact Us2. WEForum, 2017

Truly patient-led healthcare that's better for everyone
Patients are the only reason healthcare companies exist. So why, so often, are patients the people least involved in creating solutions to improve their own lives?
The internet brought revolution. Patients were empowered to share their stories globally, to build communities to support one another and solve their unmet needs.
But there’s still a vast gap between these real-life patient experiences and healthcare systems.
Healthcare companies want to become more patient-led but they struggle to integrate the voices that matter. Patients want healthcare that better meets their needs’ but they’re often excluded from developing the solutions that would help them.

That’s what merakoi is changing.
The team
We're a globally distributed team with a clear mission:
to co-create healthcare solutions that help people better navigate life with a disease.
to co-create healthcare solutions that help people better navigate life with a disease.

Kevin Michels-Kim
CEO and Co-Founder
As a digital health strategist with over 20 years' experience, Kevin saw daily how healthcare companies of all sizes sought better collaboration with patients - but also how they constantly struggled to bring patients into the conversation. That’s why merakoi was born.

Christoph Rumpf
CFO
A business economist and certified internal auditor with impressive financial credentials and an even more impressive track record, merakoi was originally one of Christoph's clients before he joined us. Now he’s a core part of the merakoi family (and an extremely valuable one).

Maria Grazia Ticca
Head of Engagement
With a decade's experience in client- and customer-facing roles in pharma and a background in life sciences marketing, Maria deeply understands our industry and the people in it. But more important, she embodies the human-centric, people-led ethos of merakoi.

Pedro Santos
Head of Delivery and Operations
Many years as a project and product manager in technology and healthcare has taught Pedro to think on his feet and wear many hats. Those qualities serve him well at merakoi, where he handles client project delivery, product releases, and recruitment.

Helen Hey
Business Strategy Director
Helen's career background has been very varied - from studying nursing and working with the elderly through to pharmaceutical sales, clinical research, marketing, and communications - but she has always worked closely with people in the healthcare space. Helen completely embodies our value of practising kindness.

Sandra Gier
Practice Lead, Patient Insights
Sandra brings 20+ years’ experience in global healthcare market research, working closely with many different HCP stakeholders and patients. This deep expertise made her acutely aware that for healthcare to work better, patients must become a profound part of co-creating solutions. That’s a vision merakoi share.

Irene Wang
UX Lead
Irene’s UX career has centred on the role technology plays in improving people’s lives, first in FemTech then in HealthTech. She’s always felt strongly that everyone must be heard to achieve impact and believes successful, meaningful design is empathetic, sensitive, and people-centric. She’s perfect for merakoi.

Debbie Denison
Digital Experience Strategist
The health industry is moving quickly towards holistic and integrated digital solutions developed with key healthcare stakeholders that deliver demonstrable value. Debbie brings this forward-thinking mindset to merakoi - working with Patient Experts, Healthcare Professionals and industry peers to identify pain points and behavioural drivers that will have a positive impact on health outcomes, and provide a more immersive experience for people living with a chronic or rare disease.

Jolanda Groenhuijzen, MD
Partnering Lead & Member Board of Directors
Jolanda is a Medical Doctor, Founder of International Women in Science, and Member of the Board at Merakoi. She is a seasoned healthcare business professional: with 25+ years’ experience including international operational and managerial roles in Medical, Marketing and Market Access for blue chip companies AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Novartis.

Justin Schneller
Strategic Accounts Lead
Justin brings a wealth of international experience from a wide range of industries including medical devices and pharma. Having worked with customers and users to launch new and exciting products to market, he knows how to translate customer needs into valuable offerings and services. As our Strategic Accounts Lead, he is well positioned to help merakoi grow by identifying new opportunities and services and improving upon our existing ones.
Our patient experts
Our patient experts combine lived disease experience with specialist knowledge and skills that are applicable to designing and launching innovative healthcare solutions.
Our curated, highly-engaged network has hundreds of patient experts covering 17 countries and 60 diseases and conditions – and is growing constantly (our network doubled year-on-year for the past three years.)
Our curated, highly-engaged network has hundreds of patient experts covering 17 countries and 60 diseases and conditions – and is growing constantly (our network doubled year-on-year for the past three years.)
100% of our patient experts are living with a chronic disease, either as a patient or a caregiver.
Learn more about becoming a patient expert.
Talk to us about collaborating with patient experts on your project.
Learn more about becoming a patient expert.
Talk to us about collaborating with patient experts on your project.
The values we live by

Practice kindness
Empathy and compassion are at the heart of merakoi. We act with calmness, integrity, and patience – especially at times of pressure. Flexibility is central too. We co-create working arrangements that work for everyone, accommodating our patient experts’ unique needs, pressures, and priorities.

Embrace curiousity
Confidently source, engage, manage, and pay your hybrid workforce using our customizable platform that scales with your needs. Give your teams the freedom to work with talent while maintaining company policies with flexible approval workflows.

Create together
Truly creating together is what sets merakoi apart. We work without hierarchy. Our team, healthcare companies, and our patient experts collaborate with radical trust, transparency, and equality to develop, design, and build healthcare solutions that have a profound impact for patients worldwide.We believe in the power of many diverse voices, given the space, respect and trust to thrive.

Innovate courageously
It takes courage to be bold. It takes courage to be truly visionary and truly creative It takes courage to embrace a business model that
goes against the grain of what?s been done before.We’re not afraid to experiment and fail – we’re urged on by our vision for a radically more effective, more sustainable healthcare ecosystem founded on collective experience.
goes against the grain of what?s been done before.We’re not afraid to experiment and fail – we’re urged on by our vision for a radically more effective, more sustainable healthcare ecosystem founded on collective experience.
