The ROI of Human Performance: Derrick L. Miles on Transforming Wellness for Private Clients
Last month, Derrick L. Miles, a leading Advisor to Private Clients & Family Offices, was featured in Wealth Reimagined to discuss the future of high-touch, personalized wellness services. The feature, titled “From prevention to performance: The Personalized Wellness Approach,” highlighted how Miles is fundamentally shifting the focus from reactive “sick care” to proactive longevity optimization for discerning individuals.
Drawing on his background as a hospital executive, Miles recognized that the traditional healthcare system is structurally reactive. This conviction, born from a personal realization that the system was failing even those within it, drove his mission to develop a vision for a proactive, elegant, and highly accessible wellness experience for his private clients.
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.
