Caregiving, Chronic Illness, and Self-Advocacy | Blush & Bloom Podcast | Ep. 34

Living with a chronic condition often means living with uncertainty. Symptoms come and go, tests come back inconclusive, and records sit scattered across different hospital portals that never talk to each other. For patients and the families who care for them, that fragmentation is exhausting, and sometimes dangerous.

In this episode of Blush & Bloom, host Gigi Kenneth talks with Uma Subramanian, a technologist and two-time breast cancer survivor who founded Maarge and My Caregiving Ally. After years in enterprise technology at companies like IBM and Sybase, Uma turned her own health journey into a platform built to help patients track symptoms, spot patterns, and keep their whole medical picture in one place.

Together, they explore what it takes to advocate for yourself when the system is stretched thin, why caregiving has to be designed into health tools from the start, and how a background in fraud analytics shaped a very personal approach to pattern-tracking.

In This Episode, We Cover:

• Moving from enterprise technology into building a women's health company
• Surviving breast cancer twice and learning to track symptoms
• Why Maarge is designed for caregivers and families, not just patients
• How fraud analytics shaped Uma's pattern-tracking approach
• Digital health, AI, and why trust matters more than speed
• Medication overload in older adults and the risk of double-dosing
• What health tech founders overlook about women's health

🧭 From Enterprise Tech to Women's Health

Uma did not set out to be a founder. After years implementing IBM's products for large customers, she got sick, and the tools she needed simply did not exist in one place.

"It was never that I wanted to build a women's health technology company," she says. "It was more, okay, I have a problem. I don't know how I'm gonna manage this problem."

She describes herself as "a technologist at heart, but also a realist," someone who believes technology matters only when it makes a life easier. Piecing together exports from a handful of separate apps into a spreadsheet was not making anything easier, so she started building the thing she wished she could use.

💗 Why Does Caregiving Belong Inside a Health App?

Because illness is rarely a solo experience. Uma designed Maarge so that if a patient can no longer speak for themselves, a spouse or child can step in already knowing who the doctors are, what medications are being taken, and what to track. Caregiving, she argues, is not a separate feature, it is part of the same relationship.

Uma thinks about this in concrete terms: what would her own children need to know to have a useful conversation with her neurologist or cardiologist? What happens when one sibling hands off care to another, or when a friend agrees to drive her mother to an appointment but has no idea who the primary care physician is? Maarge pulls appointments, doctors, prescriptions, and allergies into a single record so that in an emergency, everyone involved can see the full picture.

🔍 What Does Fraud Analytics Have to Do With Chronic Illness?

More than you would think. Uma's earlier work involved finding hidden connections in data: who is linked to whom, what happened just before something else, and what the pattern predicts. She applied the same instinct to her own body.

She noticed her neurological flares were not random. Certain early signs, like losing her balance in the morning, tended to precede a crash by 24 to 48 hours. Once she could see that chain of events, she could sometimes interrupt it.

"So I went from being mount Vesuvius," she says, "then go, poof, everything blows up to more of a gently rolling hill."

That is the heart of Maarge: let people define their own signals, log them when they happen, and surface the patterns that a busy doctor might otherwise miss. Uma is clear that the platform is HIPAA compliant and does not sell user data. The goal is to help people find connections in their own information.

🩺 The Advocacy Problem: "This Is Not in My Head"

Women are too often told their symptoms are imagined. Uma has heard from someone using Maarge who brought their tracking data to a doctor, which prompted follow-on tests that finally identified the source of the problem. Data turned a dismissed complaint into a diagnosis worth investigating.

She ties this to a wider gap in women's health. For too long, women who raised concerns were told it was "just in your head," only to face a serious diagnosis years later. Having dates, symptoms, and patterns written down changes the conversation. As Uma puts it, you can walk in and say, "no, this is not in my head. This is actually happening, and these are the dates it happened on."

💊 Medication Overload and the Danger of Fragmented Care

One of the most striking stories in the episode is about Uma's mother-in-law, who kept falling and ending up in the emergency room. After several visits, a social worker raised concerns about elder abuse. Uma laid out every prescription on her dining table and showed that the real issue was multiple medications, prescribed across different systems, quietly doing the same thing.

This is common, she explains, because older adults often see several doctors who cannot see each other's prescriptions, so the same drug gets prescribed twice under different names. Consolidating that information in one place is not, in her words, rocket science, but it can prevent overdosing and dangerous interactions. She sees a future where the app can flag potential contraindications and nudge someone to talk to their doctor.

🌸 What Founders Get Wrong About Women's Health

Uma offers a memorable analogy: women's health needs a handicap, in the golf sense. Women are often the caretakers at home, so they tend to underreport their own pain and symptoms.

Ask a woman to rate her pain from one to ten, she says, and many will say four or five, because they know a higher number might mean being told to stop doing everything they are responsible for. Founders building in this space, she argues, should account for that gap rather than take the numbers at face value. When many people insist a problem is not a problem, the real work is figuring out how to surface and solve it anyway.

🤖 Digital Health, AI, and the Question of Trust

On AI, Uma is optimistic but measured. She praises its use in reading scans and speeding up analysis, and she welcomes doctors who use AI note-takers so after-visit summaries reflect the actual conversation. Her caution is about balance.

"So I think if digital health is pushed too much, I think we will lose trust."

AI should augment clinicians, not replace the human judgment that complex conditions like lupus or Lyme disease still require. Push everything fully digital, she warns, and you risk a bigger problem than the one you set out to fix.

💬 A Message for Women Navigating Cancer

Asked what she would tell women facing a cancer diagnosis, Uma is direct and hopeful: the odds are with you, you will survive, and cancer research keeps moving forward so you can stay a step ahead. Shift your focus, she says, from fear to living, and to what matters most to you. She points to Rachel Platten's "Fight Song" as her own reminder that, in her words, "you are your own hero."

FAQ

Who is Uma Subramanian? Uma Subramanian is a technologist and two-time breast cancer survivor who spent years in enterprise technology, including at IBM and Sybase, before founding Maarge and My Caregiving Ally, platforms that help patients and families track health information in one place.

What is Maarge? Maarge is a data-driven health platform that lets people track symptoms and health events, store their doctors, appointments, medications, and allergies in one record, and share that information with caregivers. Uma has said the platform is HIPAA compliant and does not use member data for other purposes.

How can tracking symptoms help women advocate for themselves? Keeping a record of symptoms, dates, and patterns gives women concrete data to bring to appointments. In the episode, Uma shares that a Maarge user's tracking data helped their doctor recognize a real problem and order follow-on tests.

Why does Uma build for caregivers, not just patients? Because a patient may not always be able to speak for themselves. Designing for caregivers means a family member can step in already knowing the doctors, medications, and history, which reduces stress and prevents gaps in care.

Why is medication overload a risk for older adults? Older adults often see multiple doctors who cannot see each other's prescriptions, so the same type of medication can be prescribed more than once. Consolidating everything in one place helps catch double-dosing and dangerous interactions.

💬 Final Thoughts

Uma Subramanian's story is a reminder that the best health tools often come from lived experience. When you build for the person who is not at their best, you build something that serves everyone: patients, caregivers, and the doctors trying to help them.

Advocacy starts with information. When women can see their own patterns, name what is happening, and hand a clear record to the people caring for them, they walk into every appointment a little more prepared, and a lot more heard.

👥 Connect with the Guest

Uma Subramanian: https://www.linkedin.com/in/umasubramaniansj/

Gigi Kenneth (Host): https://www.linkedin.com/in/gigikenneth

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