About Kevin Woolley

Background

Before founding BlueRipple Health, Kevin spent two decades in business strategy and industry analysis. His career included equity research at BTG Pactual, Latin America’s top investment bank. He led international expansion projects across the Americas and Europe. He served as Vice President for Latin America at Geotab, growing the region from under 5,000 to over 110,000 connected commercial vehicles in three years.

Kevin Woolley is the Lead Analyst at BlueRipple Health. His background combines industry analysis expertise with personal experience navigating the healthcare system as a patient with significant cardiovascular disease.

Throughout this career, the common thread was analyzing complex systems to find what matters. Industries, markets, and organizations all have underlying structures that drive outcomes. Understanding those structures enables better decisions. Kevin applied this same analytical approach to healthcare when personal circumstances demanded it.

Kevin holds an MBA from Columbia Business School and London Business School.

The Personal Story

In 2023, Kevin began researching heart disease after personal reasons prompted closer examination of cardiovascular health. What started as routine inquiry became comprehensive investigation.

The standard approach to cardiovascular risk assessment relies on traditional risk factors: age, blood pressure, cholesterol levels, smoking status, diabetes. These factors predict population-level risk reasonably well. But they miss substantial numbers of individuals who have significant disease despite favorable risk profiles.

Kevin’s research revealed the full landscape of diagnostic options. Advanced imaging modalities can detect atherosclerosis directly rather than inferring risk from proxy factors. Coronary artery calcium scoring quantifies calcified plaque. CT angiography visualizes both calcified and non-calcified plaque. These tests identify disease that traditional screening misses.

Armed with this knowledge, Kevin advocated for more comprehensive evaluation. He requested tests that were not part of standard screening protocols. He pushed back, politely but persistently, against guidance that would have limited his evaluation to conventional approaches.

The results were significant. Testing revealed substantial heart disease that would likely have gone undetected for another 10 to 15 years under standard care. By that point, the disease might have progressed to symptoms, events, or death before anyone knew it existed.

Early detection enabled aggressive treatment. A cardiologist recently told Kevin, with characteristic dark humor, that he would probably die of cancer now. Heart disease had been transformed from a likely cause of death into something that would probably not kill him.

The difference was information. Knowing what to ask for made early detection possible. Advocating effectively made it happen.

Why BlueRipple Health

Kevin’s experience crystallized a broader problem. The information gap that nearly cost him a timely diagnosis affects millions of patients with heart disease and other conditions.

Standard health content does not prepare patients to advocate effectively. It presents guideline-based approaches as if they were sufficient for everyone. It omits the advanced options that exist beyond standard protocols. It leaves patients passive rather than empowering them to seek optimal care. These are the systematic failures in health information that BlueRipple Health addresses.

The solution requires comprehensive ecosystem analysis that treats patients as capable adults with agency over their own health. It requires examining not just clinical options but also the economic and institutional factors that shape what care gets recommended. It requires providing tools for advocacy, not just information for understanding. Our content methodology and business model are designed to deliver this analysis.

BlueRipple Health exists to provide this analysis. Kevin’s goal is to help readers become optimally informed consumers of healthcare products and services, effectively navigating the complex ecosystem both within and beyond clinical boundaries. The information prepares patients for better conversations with their healthcare teams. It does not replace those conversations.

Perspective on Subclinical Disease

Kevin believes subclinical heart disease is underdiagnosed due to a lack of high-quality information allowing patients to effectively advocate for themselves.

The screening approaches embedded in clinical guidelines are reasonable population-level strategies. They work well enough for most patients most of the time. But they systematically miss patients whose disease does not manifest through traditional risk factors.

Advanced detection options exist. Many patients could benefit from more comprehensive evaluation than standard protocols provide. Yet without the information to know these options exist and the advocacy skills to pursue them, patients default to whatever their providers happen to recommend.

This default is not optimal. Patients who take an active role in their cardiovascular health, armed with comprehensive information about available approaches, are more likely to catch disease early when treatment is most effective.

BlueRipple Health content supports this active approach. It explains what options exist, how to evaluate them, and how to navigate the system to access appropriate care. We start with heart disease because the impact potential and information gap are nowhere greater. The goal is to create optimally informed healthcare consumers who can advocate effectively for their own best outcomes.