Therabody has named its first chief dermatologist.

Dr. Dhaval Bhanusali, who has worked on beauty brands from Hailey Bieber’s Rhode to Martha Stewart’s Elm Biosciences, is joining Therabody in the newly created role.

“My job is not to promote a product, but to help build it,” Bhanusali said. “This organically started when I was asking about the studies for Therabody’s LED mask. I feel this obligation to my colleagues and peers since a lot of them ask me for my thoughts. Lo and behold, Tim [Roberts, Therabody’s chief science officer] sent me one of the most comprehensive studies I’ve ever seen in the space.”

As Roberts remembers that initial introduction, the call, scheduled for 30 minutes, went on for two hours. “We have this shared vision that there’s this opportunity for technology to bring so much to the skin, to hair and so on,” Roberts said. “Not only is there so much opportunity ahead of us, there’s a need to do it with the science and a science-first approach. For us, that really is where this started.”

Therabody’s entry into beauty really started with the company’s core offerings in muscle recovery. “We’re known for recovery, performance, reducing pain, reducing stress. As we looked to different technologies, a lot of our R&D was focused on light therapy. It was focused on heating and cooling technologies as well, and it was focused on electrical stimulation,” Roberts said. “We said, ‘You know, not only can all of these technologies treat muscle, but you can actually treat the skin in a really powerful way.’”

The opportunities lie in both nascent and established modalities. “I hate the word ‘biohacker,’ but I do love utilizing the tools we have to enhance results,” Bhanusali said. “I’ve always joked people believe my practice has been built on skin care brands, but my office is built on results.

“I’ve been lucky enough to work on the prescription side, on the over-the-counter side and on the topicals side,” Bhanusali continued. “The last piece is incorporating technology. I’ve always struggled with it because I’m always trying to find the right tools. We get to find concrete solutions for problems that we know exist. As a doctor, there are blind spots that we have that we wish we could extend through the journey of patient care and consumer care, that we wish we could facilitate. This allows us to do so. If something doesn’t exist, you build it.”

In tandem with that, Roberts is seeing growing appetite from Therabody’s clients for the science that underpins each of the products. “They want to understand how does this product work, does it have the right specifications in the same way you would look at what ingredients are in something. What is the wavelength of this light, what is the power density, what is the fluence of light I’m receiving,” Smith said. “When you have a flooding of the market with lots of technology, you have an ever more informed consumer. The only way to lead is through great science because that’s the only truth you have.”