Why Hims & Hers Hired an Autonomous Vehicle Expert as CTO: AI Strategy Revealed

The Strategic Hire from Autonomous Vehicles to Healthcare

In a move that initially might seem like an unusual career trajectory, telehealth and wellness company Hims & Hers has deliberately recruited a veteran of the autonomous vehicle industry as its new chief technology officer. The company announced on Thursday that Mo Elshenawy, the former president and CTO of self-driving car company Cruise, would be stepping into the technology leadership role at the healthcare platform.

This decision was far from accidental. According to Andrew Dudum, co-founder and CEO of Hims & Hers, the search for the company’s next technology leader intentionally targeted expertise from the autonomous driving sector. The primary motivation? Finding a technology executive with experience implementing artificial intelligence in high-stakes environments where human lives are literally on the line.

“I was looking very much at leaders in the autonomous driving space, explicitly because you’re talking about leveraging technology and data and AI in an extremely high-sensitive environment where you have people’s lives at risk,” Dudum explained in an interview with TechCrunch.

Elshenawy’s appointment comes at a pivotal time for Hims & Hers as the company seeks to expand its AI capabilities and technical infrastructure. His transition from Cruise occurred after parent company GM significantly scaled back the autonomous vehicle program earlier this year, creating an opportunity for the telehealth company to acquire top-tier AI talent from outside the traditional healthcare technology sector.

The Surprising Technological Parallels Between Self-Driving Cars and Telehealth

While the jump from self-driving cars to digital healthcare might initially appear disconnected, a closer examination reveals significant technological parallels between these seemingly disparate industries. Both sectors rely heavily on real-time data processing, pattern recognition, trustworthy AI systems, and operation within strict regulatory frameworks.

Elshenawy himself addressed this connection, telling TechCrunch, “Self-driving cars use AI to make real-time decisions in complex, high-stakes and heavily regulated environments, where earning trust is everything.” He continued, “Healthcare operates under the same conditions. You’re dealing with people’s lives, limited resources, and systems under stress. Translating AI into safe, reliable decision-making at scale applies directly to what we’re building at Hims & Hers.”

This perspective illuminates why Dudum and the Hims & Hers leadership team viewed the autonomous vehicle sector as fertile ground for finding a technology leader who could navigate the complex challenges of implementing AI in healthcare. Both industries require sophisticated systems that can make reliable decisions with potentially life-altering consequences, operate within complex regulatory environments, and maintain the highest standards of safety and reliability.

Mo Elshenawy’s AI and Robotics Expertise

Elshenawy brings to Hims & Hers an impressive technical pedigree, including ownership of more than 10 patents across artificial intelligence, robotics, and autonomous vehicles. At Cruise, he led the development of sophisticated AI systems capable of making split-second decisions in unpredictable urban environments while adhering to strict safety protocols and regulatory requirements.

His expertise in designing systems that can process vast amounts of sensor data, recognize patterns, and make safe decisions in real-time has direct applications to the healthcare challenges that Hims & Hers is trying to solve. The ability to analyze patient information, identify potential issues, and recommend appropriate treatments based on historical outcomes requires similar technical architectures and approaches.

AI systems in healthcare, like those being developed at Hims & Hers, analyze patient data patterns to assist healthcare providers in making more accurate and personalized treatment decisions.

Beyond his technical skills, Elshenawy’s experience navigating the complex regulatory landscape of autonomous vehicles provides valuable perspective for working within healthcare’s equally stringent regulatory framework. Both industries require careful attention to safety standards, transparency in decision-making processes, and rigorous testing before deployment.

Hims & Hers: From Men’s Health Startup to Comprehensive Telehealth Platform

To understand the significance of this high-profile hire, it’s essential to recognize Hims & Hers’ evolution from its targeted beginnings to its current comprehensive telehealth ambitions. Founded in 2017, the San Francisco-based company initially focused on men’s health, offering direct-to-consumer services for conditions like erectile dysfunction and hair loss.

By 2018, the company expanded its scope to include women’s health, adding “Hers” to its name and broadening its service offerings. The company went public in 2021 through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), providing capital for further expansion. Today, Hims & Hers offers a much wider range of telehealth services, including mental health care and weight loss treatments.

The company’s recent executive appointments signal its ambitious growth trajectory. In addition to Elshenawy as CTO, Hims & Hers recently announced that former Amazon executive Nader Kabbani would be joining as chief of operations. These strategic hires from technology giants rather than traditional healthcare companies highlight the company’s self-identification as a technology platform that delivers healthcare services, rather than a traditional healthcare provider adopting technology.

The AI-Powered Healthcare Vision

Dudum envisions artificial intelligence as the core technology that will enable Hims & Hers to expand its reach and improve patient outcomes. The company currently serves between 10,000 and 15,000 patients daily, generating a massive dataset of anonymized patient information, including clinical visits, prescribed medications, and treatment outcomes.

This rich repository of healthcare data provides the foundation for developing sophisticated AI models that can assist healthcare providers in diagnosing conditions and recommending effective treatments. As Dudum explains it, the goal is to leverage technology to scale high-quality healthcare to more people while improving the precision and effectiveness of the care provided.

“We have all this data on what works and what doesn’t work,” Dudum explained in the TechCrunch interview. “We can use that information to build really sophisticated recommendation engines that help our clinical team make better decisions for patients.”

The appointment of Elshenawy signals a commitment to accelerating this AI-driven vision, bringing expertise in developing sophisticated decision systems that can analyze complex data and provide actionable insights while maintaining the highest standards of safety and reliability.

How Patient Data is Being Utilized to Transform Healthcare

At the heart of Hims & Hers’ AI strategy is the responsible use of anonymized patient data to develop models that can improve healthcare delivery. The company has amassed a valuable dataset from millions of patient interactions, including information about clinical visits, prescribed medications, and treatment outcomes.

This data provides the raw material for training AI systems that can identify patterns and correlations that might not be immediately apparent to human clinicians. By analyzing which treatments have been most effective for patients with similar characteristics, these models can help healthcare providers make more informed and personalized treatment recommendations.

Anonymized patient data from telehealth interactions creates valuable datasets that can be analyzed to improve treatment recommendations and healthcare outcomes.

Unlike traditional healthcare providers who might have limited visibility into patient outcomes after treatment, Hims & Hers’ direct-to-consumer model enables the company to maintain ongoing relationships with patients and track the effectiveness of treatments over time. This longitudinal data provides additional insights that can further refine the company’s AI models and treatment approaches.

MedMatch: An Early Example of AI Implementation

Hims & Hers has already begun implementing AI tools to enhance healthcare delivery. Two years ago, the company trained a model on its proprietary dataset to create MedMatch, a tool designed to help healthcare providers recommend appropriate mental health treatments for patients.

MedMatch analyzes patient information and historical treatment data to suggest mental health medications that have been effective for similar patients in the past. This approach helps address one of the most challenging aspects of mental health treatment: finding the right medication match for individual patients, which often involves trial and error in traditional practice.

According to the company, the tool helps streamline the process of selecting appropriate treatments while still keeping healthcare professionals firmly in control of all clinical decisions. MedMatch serves as an early example of how Hims & Hers envisions AI augmenting—rather than replacing—healthcare providers.

With Elshenawy’s expertise in developing sophisticated AI systems, Hims & Hers is positioned to expand and enhance tools like MedMatch across more healthcare domains, potentially improving treatment outcomes while making healthcare delivery more efficient and accessible.

The Human-in-the-Loop Approach to Healthcare AI

A crucial aspect of Hims & Hers’ AI strategy is maintaining what’s known as a “human-in-the-loop” approach, where AI systems provide support and recommendations but healthcare professionals retain decision-making authority. This approach recognizes both regulatory requirements and the irreplaceable value of human clinical judgment.

“There’s a very strict and structured approach when it comes to clinical decision tools within the medical industry, so providers are ultimately, from a regulatory standpoint, still necessary to make all of these clinical judgments and decisions,” Dudum emphasized in his TechCrunch interview. He clarified that the company’s AI products are designed to provide insights and enhance provider efficiency and precision rather than make autonomous clinical decisions.

This parallels Elshenawy’s experience at Cruise, where autonomous systems were designed to handle routine driving tasks but included mechanisms for human intervention when necessary. The same principles of designing systems that know their limitations and appropriately defer to human judgment apply in both autonomous vehicles and healthcare AI.

By maintaining this balanced approach, Hims & Hers aims to leverage AI’s strengths in pattern recognition and data analysis while preserving the human elements of healthcare that cannot be replicated by algorithms, such as empathy, contextual understanding, and ethical judgment.

The Importance of AI Transparency in Healthcare

Another critical element of Hims & Hers’ AI strategy is maintaining transparency in how AI systems arrive at their recommendations. According to Dudum, the company’s AI tools are designed to “show their work,” providing healthcare providers with insights into which factors influenced the system’s recommendations.

“Showing the work and actually providing the kind of context behind the scenes as to what’s driving and what weights are driving the outputs, I think are actually, in many ways, just as valuable as the actual recommendation,” Dudum explained.

This approach addresses one of the most significant concerns about AI in healthcare: the “black box” problem, where AI systems make recommendations without providing clear explanations for their reasoning. By making the decision-making process transparent, Hims & Hers aims to build trust with both healthcare providers and patients while enabling clinicians to evaluate the AI’s suggestions based on their own expertise.

Elshenawy’s experience designing transparent AI systems for autonomous vehicles, where understanding why a vehicle made a particular decision is critical for safety and regulatory compliance, provides valuable expertise for implementing similar transparency in healthcare AI applications.

Future Implications for AI in Telehealth

The strategic hiring of Mo Elshenawy signals Hims & Hers’ ambition to position itself at the forefront of AI-powered telehealth innovation. As healthcare continues to evolve toward more digital and remote delivery models, companies that can effectively leverage AI to enhance diagnosis, treatment selection, and patient monitoring will likely gain significant competitive advantages.

Several potential developments could emerge from this technology-focused approach to telehealth:

1. Personalized Treatment Plans: AI models could become increasingly sophisticated at recommending personalized treatment approaches based on individual patient characteristics, medical history, and treatment response patterns.
2. Preventive Interventions: Advanced analytics might identify patients at risk for developing certain conditions, enabling earlier interventions and potentially better outcomes.
3. Expanded Access: AI-assisted diagnosis and treatment could help extend quality healthcare to underserved populations by making each provider more efficient and effective.
4. Continuous Improvement: As more patient data is collected and analyzed, AI models could continuously improve, learning from outcomes and refining their recommendations.
5. Integration with Remote Monitoring: AI systems might eventually integrate with remote monitoring devices, enabling more comprehensive and continuous patient care.

With Elshenawy’s leadership and expertise in developing sophisticated AI systems for complex environments, Hims & Hers appears positioned to accelerate innovation in these areas while maintaining the necessary balance between technological advancement and patient safety.

The convergence of talent from autonomous vehicles and healthcare technology represents an emerging trend where expertise from various high-tech fields is being applied to transform healthcare delivery. As this trend continues, we may see increasing cross-pollination of ideas and approaches between industries that were previously considered entirely separate domains.

For patients, these developments could ultimately translate into more personalized, effective, and accessible healthcare services—a vision that aligns with Hims & Hers’ mission to expand access to high-quality healthcare through technology and innovation.