A membership service that runs more than one hundred lab biomarkers twice a year with clinician review, part of a broader move toward proactive, preventive testing.
Facts
- Founded
- 2022
- Co-founders
- Jonathan Swerdlin, Mark Hyman
- Headquarters
- Austin, Texas
- Model
- Annual membership for lab testing
- Notable feature
- More than 100 biomarkers
Overview
Function Health is an American consumer health company that sells an annual membership for comprehensive laboratory testing, giving members results across more than one hundred blood biomarkers along with software and clinician guidance to interpret them. Founded in 2022 and led by co-founder and chief executive Jonathan Swerdlin, with the physician and author Mark Hyman as a co-founder and public face, Function has become one of the most prominent brands in the growing market for proactive blood testing. The company's pitch is that conventional medicine tests too little, too late, ordering only a handful of markers when a problem is already suspected. By measuring a broad panel on a healthy schedule, Function argues, members can catch warning signs early and track their own physiology over time, an approach aligned with the quantified self movement and a wider interest in biomarkers of aging.
What it does
For a yearly fee, reported at around 500 dollars, a member visits a partner laboratory for a blood draw, and Function returns results for a large panel of markers covering areas such as heart health, hormones, metabolism, thyroid function, inflammation, nutrients, and organ function. The panel, initially advertised at more than 100 tests and later expanded well beyond that, is repeated during the year so members can see trends rather than a single snapshot. Crucially, Function adds a layer of interpretation on top of the raw numbers. Results are reviewed by clinicians, flagged when values fall outside healthy ranges, and presented in an app with plain-language explanations and suggested next steps. This clinician layer is what the company uses to distinguish an ordinary lab report from a guided health service.
Growth and expansion
Function grew quickly on word of mouth and celebrity endorsement, building a long waitlist and a membership reported in the six figures within a few years of launch. The trend it rides is broader than one company. Figures such as Bryan JohnsonPersonBryan JohnsonAmerican entrepreneur who sold Braintree for about 800 million dollars and now runs Blueprint, an intensively quantified attempt to slow his own aging.Person → have popularized intensive personal measurement, and adjacent services built around continuous glucose monitoring and consumer wearables have made self-tracking mainstream. In 2025 Function acquired Ezra, a startup offering artificial-intelligence-assisted whole-body magnetic resonance imaging, and used it to launch a lower-cost full-body MRI scan, extending the company from blood into imaging. Reporting around the same period described a funding round valuing Function at roughly 2.5 billion dollars, making it one of the more highly valued consumer health startups, though such figures should be read with caution.
Reception and debate
Function has been praised for making comprehensive testing accessible and legible to ordinary people, and for encouraging a preventive mindset. The service also draws the same criticisms leveled at broad screening in general. Testing many markers in healthy people inevitably produces false positives and incidental findings, results that look abnormal but reflect normal variation, which can lead to anxiety, unnecessary follow-up tests, and cost. Some physicians question whether many of the measured markers change outcomes, and note that a value outside the reference range on a screening panel is not the same as a diagnosis, which still requires proper clinical evaluation. Whole-body MRI scanning attracts a sharper version of the same concern, since it frequently uncovers harmless anomalies that nonetheless prompt further investigation. Supporters counter that informed people can handle their own data and that catching serious disease early is worth the noise, and Function has been careful to say that its service is meant to supplement rather than replace a relationship with a primary-care physician.
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