About Faex Health

Building the future of preventative GI health monitoring.

Faex Health is a mission-driven preventative health company using applied AI and computer vision to make digestive health visible earlier, continuously, and at scale. This page is who we are, why we exist, and where we are going.

Why we exist

The most overlooked health signal, made readable.

Faex didn't begin with artificial intelligence. It began with curiosity.

While studying at the University of Colorado Boulder, founder Landon Nattrass became fascinated by the fact that stool contains an extraordinary amount of information about digestive health, yet millions of people simply flush it away every day. The team believed smartphones and AI could change that.

The company's first approach wasn't software—it was hardware. Early prototypes attempted to automate stool imaging, but after countless iterations the team realized that building hardware would dramatically slow adoption and make the technology inaccessible for much of the world.

Instead of abandoning the mission, they changed the technology.

By leveraging the smartphone already in nearly every pocket, Faex could scale globally while continuously improving through machine learning.

That decision opened doors to international collaborations, infectious disease research across Africa, government partnerships, and ultimately clinical validation studies designed to evaluate AI-assisted gastrointestinal risk assessment at population scale.

Today, Faex is building the world's largest longitudinal visual dataset of digestive health with the goal of making gut monitoring as routine as tracking heart rate or blood pressure.

The record so far

  1. Founded at the University of Colorado Boulder. May 2024 Faex began after co-founders Landon Nattrass and Ryan Ninness asked a simple question: why do we monitor almost every aspect of our health, but ignore one of the body's most informative daily signals?
  2. Built the first generation hardware prototype. Sep. 2024 The team initially pursued an automated stool imaging device. After numerous hardware iterations, reliability, manufacturing complexity, and cost made the approach impractical at scale. Rather than forcing the technology, the team pivoted toward smartphone-based computer vision.
  3. AI platform and global research expansion. Oct. 2024 Faex shifted entirely to AI-powered stool analysis using smartphones, rapidly growing its image dataset while working with researchers and clinicians across multiple countries, including projects throughout Africa focused on infectious disease surveillance.
  4. First successful colorectal cancer pre-cancerous polyps detection. Nov. 2025 The platform demonstrated its ability to identify stool characteristics associated with colorectal cancer via pre-cancerous polyps, validating the broader vision that stool images could become an early-warning signal for infectious disease outbreaks and chronic gastrointestinal conditions alike.
  5. Clinical validation and healthcare deployment. 2026 Government-supported clinical studies launched in Chile alongside employer health pilots, expanding Faex toward provider workflows, population health, and national healthcare systems.

Our mission

To make preventative gastrointestinal health monitoring accessible, scalable, and continuous.

  • Accessible

    The user monitoring app.

    Non-invasive, at-home participation: daily signals from a photo taken with the user's smartphone, plus symptom and context logging.

    Explore the platform

  • Continuous

    Faex MD, the professional interface.

    Structured trend summaries and AI-supported pattern flags, reviewed by clinicians and care teams between visits. Clinical visibility between healthcare interactions.

    Learn about Faex MD
    Faex MD · Trend Summary

  • Scalable

    The enterprise and population health layer.

    Preventative GI engagement deployed across plans, systems, and programs.

    View enterprise solutions

Leadership

The people keeping the record.

Founders and operations

  • Landon Nattrass Landon Nattrass Co-Founder / CEO Landon Nattrass is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Faex Health, where he leads company strategy, partnerships, fundraising, and commercialization. He founded Faex while studying Finance and Entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado Boulder with the vision of making gastrointestinal health monitoring accessible through artificial intelligence.
  • Ryan Ninness Ryan Ninness Co-Founder / CTO Ryan Ninness is the Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Faex Health and the sole inventor of the company's core AI technology. A recipient of the 1997 Microsoft Coder of the Year award, he brings more than 25 years of experience in AI, machine learning, and medical technology, helping bring 38+ products to market throughout his career. Ideated using just smartphone technology compared to hardware.
  • Nicholas Soza Nicholas Soza Head of Operations Nicholas Soza leads operations at Faex Health, overseeing execution across product development, strategic partnerships, clinical initiatives, and company operations as the organization scales.

Clinical leadership

  • Jay Yepuri, M.D. Jay Yepuri, M.D. Chief Medical Officer Board-certified gastroenterologist. Board member, GI Alliance; executive of the 3rd largest GI practice in the United States. Trustee at the ACG and the AGA. Supports Faex at the intersection of provider engagement and clinical strategy.
  • Foster Goss, DO, MMSc, FACEP, CMIO Foster Goss, DO, MMSc, FACEP, CMIO Medical / Informatics Emergency physician, UCHealth and Valley View Hospital. CMIO. Associate Professor, University of Colorado School of Medicine. Harvard Medical School alumnus. Supports Faex at the intersection of medical data and informatics.

Advisory Board

Counsel across clinical, scientific, and commercial domains.

Program membership

Member of the NVIDIA Inception program.

NVIDIA Inception supports AI startups with technical resources, training, and access to its ecosystem.

Learn about NVIDIA Inception , opens in a new tab
A clinician at a desk taking notes, with the Faex MD dashboard on the monitor beside her

Faex MD in the company story

The clinician was part of the design from the start.

A record built over months only matters if it reaches the people responsible for care. Faex MD is how the record enters the clinical conversation: structured summaries, pattern flags for professional review, and consent-based visibility between visits. It complements clinical judgment; it never replaces it.

Learn about Faex MD

The long view

A future where digestive health is monitored continuously, not reactively.

Longitudinal GI intelligence as standard infrastructure for modern healthcare: for people at home, clinicians in review, and organizations at population scale.

That is the record we intend to keep.

Work with us

Bring longitudinal GI intelligence to your organization.

Talk to the team about enterprise deployment, pilots, or partnership.