For most families, navigating healthcare can be stressful.
For those touched by a rare disease, it can feel impossible.
Endless appointments, inconclusive tests, and unclear diagnoses, each step adding to the emotional and financial toll. For Joshua Resnikoff, CEO and founder of TMA Precision Health, this struggle was deeply personal. His son’s rare disease diagnosis set him on a mission not just to find answers, but to transform how families access care.
On a recent episode of TMA’s Sunstone Health Podcast, Josh opened up about how that mission evolved, from heartbreak to innovation, from one family’s search for answers to a company redefining how rare disease care reaches the people who need it most.
When Josh first started TMA Precision Health, he knew he wanted to do more than raise awareness.
“Most people, when they get a diagnosis, start a nonprofit or an advocacy group,” he explained. “They’re doing God’s work, but I didn’t want to go that route. I wanted to create something sustainable—something that didn’t rely on yearly donations, but could grow and make a measurable impact for families.”
That mindset led Josh to build TMA as a for-profit company with a purpose, one that could offer tangible solutions for patients while still operating within the realities of the healthcare system.
One of the biggest lessons Josh learned early on is that doing good in healthcare means that the solution has to be good for business.“In healthcare, you have to make or save someone money,” he said. “Even if you have the best solution in the world, it won’t scale unless it fits into the system’s financial model.”
For TMA, that meant identifying where in the healthcare chain the company could have the biggest impact.
Hospitals and large providers, while full of talented professionals, often move too slowly and operate on razor-thin margins. Insurance companies, on the other hand, control much of the financial flow, and that’s where Josh realized he could make a difference.
By helping insurers and employers diagnose rare diseases faster and more accurately, TMA’s approach could save significant costs on unnecessary testing, misdiagnoses, and ineffective treatments while changing lives in the process.
But working directly with insurance giants proved challenging.
“It takes an average of 700 days just to get to a contract,” Josh shared. “That’s two years before you can even start seeing your first patient. ”
So TMA shifted its focus to self-funded employers, companies that pay for their employees’ healthcare directly, rather than through traditional insurers. These organizations have both the incentive and the flexibility to invest in better care for their teams.
“Employers want to take care of their people,” Josh explained. “They want mom and dad to be healthy so they show up to work and can take care of their families. They want benefits that make them competitive. And they want to control costs. That alignment made the value proposition of what we do even stronger.”
Partnering with organizations that care deeply about their employees’ well-being while still keeping an eye on financial sustainability has allowed TMA to make a real impact fast.
A big part of TMA’s success comes from building authentic partnerships with others who share its mission.
From advisors like Lena Chaihorsky at Alva10, to patient advocacy leaders such as Brad Levy of Sophie’s Journey and Gabi Conecker of the SCN8A Alliance, TMA has cultivated a network rooted in trust and shared purpose.
“These aren’t just business relationships,” Josh said. “They’re friendships built over years of working together. They know we’re not just another genetics company trying to harvest data, we’re here to make life better for families.”
These partnerships have allowed TMA to reach more families than ever before, helping thousands shorten their diagnostic journey and find answers that once felt out of reach.
Thanks to the success of TMA’s recent Wefunder crowdfunding campaign, Josh has been able to expand his team, turning a small, passionate group of believers into a growing force for change.
“My team has been amazing,” he said. “They’ve been here for the mission from day one. Now that we can bring them on full-time, we have the resources to scale and help even more families, faster.”
After years of dedication, TMA Precision Health is now in a position to do what it set out to do from the start: change the rare disease experience for families everywhere.
Learn more about TMA Precision Health and how you can support their mission to make rare disease diagnosis faster, smarter, and more accessible for families around the world.