From prevention to performance: CourMed’s personalized approach
By Kristen Oliveri
Meet Derrick L. Miles, founder of CourMed, a private client health services company delivering concierge wellness and advanced diagnostics to clients at home, in the office, and within exclusive enclaves. Guided by a mission to help people get healthy and stay that way, Miles sat down with Kristen Oliveri to discuss what’s next in personal health: leading edge diagnostic testing, proactive prevention, and practical steps families can take to own their wellbeing. Read on for insights and takeaways from the front lines of high touch healthcare.
Q: What first inspired you to step into the health and wellness space, and how has your personal journey shaped the vision behind CourMed?
A: My decision to step away from the traditional healthcare environment and into the health and wellness space was a profound personal and professional shift. For years, I was a hospital executive, fully immersed in the system of "sick care"—a system built to treat illness after it occurred.
The turning point was realizing that even with all the resources of a major health system, we were fundamentally reactive. This reality hit especially close to home: my own experience of contracting pneumonia twice while in the hospital environment was a powerful, firsthand confirmation that the focus needed to change. I was working inside the system, yet it failed to protect my own health. This deeply personal struggle reinforced my belief that the industry needed to prioritize keeping people healthy and out of the hospital in the first place.
This conviction, born from years managing the reactive care model and suffering its direct effects, shaped the vision for CourMed. I wanted to move beyond the incremental fixes of the past. The goal was to create a proactive, elegant, and highly accessible private client health experience. CourMed exists to deliver wellness solutions directly to people—whether at home, the office, or on the go—transforming health from a fragmented chore into a seamless, preventive component of a healthy, fulfilling life. It's a complete pivot from managing sick patients to empowering private clients to live well.
Q: CourMed is offering private chef services to support healthy eating. How do you see food as a critical part of prevention and longevity, and what kinds of meals or approaches are resonating most with your clients?
A: Food is absolutely a critical and foundational component of prevention and longevity. It’s where the proactive wellness journey truly begins.
If our mission is to help our private clients extend their "healthy zone" and not just wait to treat illness, then nutrition must be the first line of defense. Food is not just fuel; it's information for the body, directly impacting inflammation, cellular health, energy, and cognitive function. By controlling what goes into their meals, our clients are taking the most direct and powerful action against chronic disease and toward sustained vitality.
Q: What are the approaches resonating with your clients?
A: The types of meals and approaches that are resonating most fall into two key categories:
Anti-Aging and Performance: There is a high demand for cuisine that directly supports vitality and performance. This often means approaches rooted in science, such as the New Modern Mediterranean Diet principles—which are highly respected for supporting a longer, healthier life—or other nutrient-dense, anti-inflammatory frameworks. Clients look for meals rich in fresh, locally sourced ingredients, healthy fats, and high-quality proteins to sustain energy and performance throughout a demanding schedule.
Ultimate Convenience and Discretion: The core appeal is the ease of having a professional chef arrive with ingredients, prepare a healthy meal, and handle the cleanup in the comfort of their home. Our clients reclaim their time and mental energy, knowing their meals are nutritious, prepared with unwavering discretion, and perfectly tailored to their goals.
This service transforms the daily stress of meal prep into a proactive investment in long-term health, making healthy eating effortless for our private clients.
Q: The science around diagnostics and preventative care is evolving quickly. What’s new or exciting in bloodwork and testing that you think will change the way people approach their health?
A: Let me speak to the urgency of my situation, as it resonates deeply with how I approach health and wellness for myself and my family. Knowing that a number of people close to me, including family, have had difficult bouts with prostate cancer is the absolute reason why my required yearly testing cannot be compromised by inconvenience or outdated methods. That personal connection to the risk, and the urgency of prevention, is what drives the focus on superior diagnostic technology.
The breakthrough here is access. The latest advancements, like the genetic urine tests (such as ExosomeDx), now allow me to move my necessary annual screening from the clinic to my residence, meaning I can get tested annually in the comfort of my home with a non-invasive, high-accuracy analysis. This convenience, however, must be paired with comprehensive vigilance, which brings me to the most exciting development in bloodwork: The Breakthrough: Multi-Cancer Early Detection (MCED) Blood Test.
The shift is from a reactive, single-disease screening model to a systemic, predictive approach, and it’s all coming through the simple blood draw known as the 'liquid biopsy.'
Systemic Surveillance from a Single Draw: This single blood test analyzes tiny fragments of DNA that cancer cells shed into the bloodstream (circulating tumor DNA, or ctDNA). It is essentially a comprehensive umbrella that can look for signals indicative of over 50 different types of cancer—many of which have no routine screening available today.
The Ultimate Wealth Preservation: The value proposition is profound. The ability to find signals of cancer beforesymptoms appear is paramount. Catching cancer at Stage I versus Stage IV is the difference between a high probability of cure with minimal intervention versus a life-altering battle. This MCED test acts as a proactive, annual security scan for your overall health.
These advancements in non-invasive, highly convenient, and accurate diagnostics are fundamentally shifting our focus from simply extending lifespan to optimizing healthspan—the years of life lived in excellent health.
Q: Beyond services, many people struggle to translate health goals into daily habits. What advice do you have for building sustainable healthy routines, especially around cooking and eating at home?
A: What makes CourMed and my vision for our private clients unique is that we don't just focus on the high-end, episodic medical events. Instead, we innovate those areas that people do everyday to extend their health span: daily brushing of teeth, nutrition, and sleep. Healthspan is the duration of a person’s life in which they are in good health, and those small, repetitive habits are the bedrock. By making the healthy choice the easiest choice in these foundational areas, we drive compliance without relying solely on willpower.
A perfect example is oral care. Many disease states begin in the mouth, and poor daily habits here have systemic, long-term consequences on cardiovascular and cognitive health. That's why we are interested in solutions that ensure maximum efficacy with minimum time commitment.
For this reason, we recommends the Feno AI toothbrush—an innovation that fundamentally changes the compliance equation. It is a custom-fitted device that you insert and bite down on, which then uses AI-driven technology to clean all teeth at one time. The entire cleaning cycle is done in seconds, ensuring every surface is perfectly reached, and eliminating the variability and human error of a two-minute manual brush. This is how we simplify a critical daily habit to ensure healthspan.
For building sustainable routines, especially around cooking and eating at home, our advice focuses on lowering the friction of healthy choices. When the effort required to make a meal is low, you win.
The 15-Minute Rule for Cooking: If a recipe is going to take more than 15 minutes of hands-on prep time after your batch prep, save it for the weekend. During the week, we prioritize "sheet pan meals" or "one-pot wonders" where all ingredients are tossed together and the oven or slow-cooker does the heavy lifting. The easier the daily task, the more likely you are to do it, and consistency is the only thing that extends healthspan.
By applying this low-friction, high-impact approach to daily habits, from your diagnostics to your oral care, dinner plate, and sleep hygiene, we create a resilient lifestyle that supports, rather than detracts from, your professional success.
Q: What are you currently reading, or who are you learning from, that inspires your perspective on health, wellness, and leadership?
A: Over the past four years, my deepest dive has been into the philosophy and frameworks of the financial services sector, specifically regarding how they are now viewing wellness. It's clear that the intense, competitive pressure of this industry has made its leaders the earliest adopters of proactive health management.
I've been spending lots of time this year learning the financial services side to help individuals because the world of high finance are the early adopters of wellness. Companies like Morgan Stanley were pioneers in integrating high-level health and wellness programs for their executives and clients. Now, even firms like Citadel have adopted wellness as their competitive advantage, recognizing that peak cognitive and physical function is the ultimate strategic asset.
I view healthspan the same way they view portfolio management: a resource to be optimized, protected, and grown. Learning how these firms articulate the ROI (Return on Investment) of human performance has completely crystallized my perspective on how to serve private clients.
My primary source of inspiration and strategic learning over the past four years comes from observing and studying the principles of leaders who successfully bridge multiple complex industries, particularly Jahm Najafi.
His approach to investment—focusing on long-term value, transformation, and maximizing the potential of human capital—is perfectly analogous to how I view healthspan. The lesson I draw from his work is that true, generational wealth is inseparable from enduring health.
I value these insights so much that CourMed has implemented several initiatives into our platform due to conversations with Jahm. Specifically, I'm particularly fascinated by how high-performance individuals like Najafi incorporate disciplined lifestyle practices into their routines. The commitment to structured health habits, such as intermittent fasting, which optimizes cellular function and metabolic health, mirrors his highly disciplined investment strategy. Similarly, his dedication to simple, yet effective daily activities like swimming emphasizes that consistency in fundamental wellness is the key to sustained cognitive and physical edge. These practices illustrate that the same dedication to routine that drives financial success also preserves healthspan.
In summary, my inspiration is less about a single piece of content and more about applying the high-performance, strategic mindset of Wall Street and elite investors to the high-stakes world of personal health. It’s about treating your healthspan like your most valuable investment.