Dr. Cheryl Lee Eberting is a dermatologist-entrepreneur powerhouse, with a laser-focus on righting the flaws in healthcare.
Based in Alpine, she is the founder of Alpine Dermatology, CherylLeeMD Sensitive Skin Care, and AZOVA, a digital health benefits solution for employers, health plans and consumers that focuses on an integrative approach to healthcare.
These pursuits were sparked by her time as a clinical research fellow at the National Institutes of Health, where she treated patients with Job (named after the Bible character) Syndrome.
“These people have the worst eczema in the world,” Dr. Eberting says. “At the time, there were 144 people in the world who had this syndrome, and we saw 104 of them at the NIH. I got really good at treating really bad eczema with really bad products, and decided that one day I was going to make the most correctly engineered products for people who have sensitive skin — which is all of us.”
After five years of developing the now patented technology, she launched CherylLeeMD Sensitive Skin Care (CLMD.com) in 2014 in collaboration with a Utah mommy blogger.
“Within three days, we had people from all over the world emailing photos of themselves and their kids, asking me to treat them over the internet,” she says. “That was when I realized, ‘Whoa! Take healthcare — all of it — over the internet.’”
That day, she began conceptualizing AZOVA, and it has since grown into a flourishing, digital healthcare ecosystem.
“Our mantra at AZOVA is this,” Dr. Eberting says. “‘Our healthcare system is too broken to fix, so we built a new one.’”
THE HEALTHCARE HEROES
“With AZOVA, we are working to enable the delivery and management of all healthcare through a single, connected healthcare ecosystem,” Dr. Eberting says. “Consumers can access healthcare from any connected entity through one app.”
Any provider or healthcare entity can connect to the AZOVA ecosystem and make their services available. This is a network of doctors, pharmacies, imaging centers — including specialties from women’s health to psychiatry. The full range of services is outlined at azova.com.
Here’s how it works: If you have a persistent cough and need to meet with a primary care physician, you can sign up for an account on AZOVA and be connected quickly with a physician anywhere via secure messaging or video chat. After paying for the visit and consulting with the physician, the provider will create a treatment plan and send a prescription to a selected pharmacy nearby.
An appointment that may have taken weeks to book in-person just took a few hours from meeting to prescription pick-up.
“We’ve mastered the craft of making a great healthcare experience and delivering it quickly and really, really well,” Dr. Eberting says.
On top of the lightning-fast appointments, patients’ data is kept in the AZOVA app so patients can share their medical data with any provider, rather than having to start a new file with each separate practice.
“Your primary care provider can talk to the psychiatrist, and together they can figure out how to help you. We need our providers to be collaborating and thinking together,” Dr. Eberting says. “Without this digital health technology, it’s so cumbersome and inefficient that it seldom happens. With AZOVA, we’ve made it as efficient as sending a text.”
AZOVA’s digital framework has been patented and now has a nationwide practice covering all 50 states, offering primary care, pediatrics, men and women’s health, dermatology, psychiatry, therapy, doula and lactation services, and will soon be launching sleep and cardiology services.
“We have developed over 125 at-home lab tests (from UTI tests to the HEALTHBOX virtual preventative exam). At-home lab testing enables the delivery of so many of these healthcare services from home,” Dr. Eberting says.
From seeing its first patient via telehealth in June 2015, AZOVA now has around 200 employees and almost 1 million patients on the platform.
ENTREPRENEURIAL ROOTS
Yes, she founded Alpine Dermatology, CherylLeeMD Sensitive Skin Care, and AZOVA, but her business-building began much earlier.
In 1993, while returning home from a church mission to Japan, she had $55 left to her name. She stopped in Thailand and toured a paper factory that made beautiful handcrafted paper woven with flowers and little strips of silk.
“I thought, ‘I’m going to take this home and sell it,’” Dr. Eberting says. “So I spent the $55 on samples and started selling it at home in Seattle. Every single place I went to bought it. I had no idea how to do business, but I just figured it out.”
She ran this handcrafted paper company during her last year at BYU, all throughout medical school, and sold it after her first year of fellowship at the NIH. This company funded her medical school education and enabled Dr. Eberting to graduate debt-free.
“This experience helped me understand how to run a business,” Dr. Eberting says. “Physicians are not trained in business, taxes, regulation — and, unfortunately, that is 90 percent of healthcare. But I learned how to work with people, how to motivate employees, how to build a product.”
From student at BYU to CEO of a tech company and founder of multiple businesses, Dr. Eberting has added experience upon experience.
“This is something I try to teach my children and that we strive for as a team at AZOVA: If you are going to do something, be the best in the world at it,” she says.
GO BIG OR GO HOME
Being based in Silicon Slopes gives Dr. Eberting many opportunities to treat tech entrepreneurs. In consulting with them when she was first starting AZOVA, many commented that she should narrow to one particular focus. But Dr. Eberting disagreed.
“You see many digital health companies failing because they’re very niche solutions,” Dr. Eberting says. “You can’t do that with healthcare because it’s all so connected. From the lab, to imaging, to psychiatry and to primary care. Our goal from the start was to create a connected ecosystem, and that is truly what we have become.”
Sure enough, as many niche-focused digital health companies have failed over the last few years, AZOVA’s ability to support various clinical programs and to provide comprehensive, holistic care has proved to be a winning strategy.
“It takes a symphony of amazing skill sets to pull off what we are doing at AZOVA,” she says. “Experts across healthcare are coming together and bringing their superpowers to the table.”
Dermatologist, CEO, entrepreneur — whichever title it may be, Dr. Eberting is all-in to the revolution she has begun.
“Our healthcare system is irreparably broken,” she says. “The industry is so regulated that innovation and change are almost impossible. No single healthcare provider can fix it by themselves. I ask fellow healthcare professionals to join us in our efforts. Change is difficult, expensive and painful, but it must happen and we can do it together.”
This is the call of a healthcare hero.