Tag Archives: mobile

Several Great Presentations To Share

March 19, 2014 by George Van Antwerp 0 Comments

I try not to do a lot of promotion of things within the company.  (This is not a corporate blog.)  But, I’m always happy to share cool things that are in the public domain that catch my eye. 

Our sister company – GSW Worldwide – has been putting out a lot of new things on a blog, through their innovation lab, and through their SlideShare channel.  I thought I would highlight a few of those here.  Leigh Householder, Chief Innovation Officer, along with Ritesh Patel, Global Head of Digital, are driving a lot of this along with others on their teams. 

 

Healthcare
, , , , , ,

Interview With David Tripi – Janssen Healthcare Innovation

January 6, 2014 by George Van Antwerp 0 Comments

A few weeks ago, as a follow-up to my discussion with Aetna about CarePass, I had a chance to talk with David Tripi from Janssen Healthcare Innovation about their new solution.

David is a founding partner at Janssen Healthcare Innovation where he is part of a multi-disciplinary group working toward the goal of propelling the company to become the leader in the healthcare solution business. Prior to the launch of the JHI team, David was with Johnson & Johnson for over 15 years.

“Janssen Healthcare Innovation (JHI), an entrepreneurial group within Janssen Research & Development, LLC, develops cutting-edge health solutions designed to modernize healthcare delivery, improve patient outcomes, and create a healthier world.”  This is a 3-year old effort by Johnson & Johnson focused on integrated care businesses and enabling technologies.  To support those, medication adherence and mobile are key areas.

One thing that David stressed is that they are platform agnostic and that their Care4Today Mobile Health Manager works as both an app and via SMS.  Therefore, the 50% of the US that doesn’t have a smartphone can still use it.  Additionally, it’s not a product or drug specific solution.  You can use this even if you don’t use a J&J product.

Care4Today Care4Family

Adherence is a huge challenge that everyone is aligned around, and everyone is trying to find solutions – plan design, incentives, apps, consumer engagement, framing, behavioral economics, and smart pill bottles (to name a few).  So, what’s part of the Care4Today solution?

  • It has reminders for Rx and OTC products.
  • It has a refill reminder process which they hope to automate in the future.
  • It has a two way secure messaging platform.
  • It has images of over 20,000 pills.
  • And, they also included a caregiver strategy and an incentive option.

The idea of social health is important.  We’ve talked about this for weight loss and smoking.  But, with the expanded role of caregivers, can they play a key role in improving adherence?  For example, if you respond that you didn’t take your pill and the response goes to your caregiver, will they call you?  Will that follow-up motivate you?  (Care4Family)  Some prior research says yes.

A broader question might be about how to pick a caregiver or how to define it.  Should it just be your family?  Should it include your physician?  What if you don’t have a support system?  Could the healthcare companies or advocacy companies give you a “professional caregiver”?  What about an avatar as a caregiver?

I asked about the incentive program that they included (Care4Charity).  David pointed out that using apps isn’t fun (at least for most people) so they wanted to give a slight motivation.  I questioned him on why $0.05 (which is the daily donation if you check in and take your meds).  They did lots of research which showed that the amount didn’t really matter.  So, this is an experiment to see if this extra feature of the program will nudge people to be more adherent.  Or ultimately, it would be great to segment the population to understand who it was motivating for and for whom it didn’t matter.

One of the things I wondered about was how they were going to promote the app.  Obviously, relationships with companies like Aetna and their CarePass program are one way, but with the tens of thousands of apps out there, how will people find it?  David told me that they were going to initially focus on social media – Facebook, Twitter, and mommy blogs – to drive awareness.  Next, they’re going to use pharma reps to discuss the app with physicians and pilot this strategy in HIV.

At the time, they’d had over 55,000 consumer downloads, and they’ve already gotten some initial feedback from physicians that like the fact that they’re offering solutions that aren’t branded to a specific pharmaceutical product.  Some of those physicians are already offering it to patients.  They expect this will be a big driver.  They are now starting to talk with retail pharmacies about how to encourage consumer use.  While my initial reaction was that this would be “competitive” with the Walgreens and CVS Caremark mobile solutions, they see collaboration opportunities especially with Walgreens and their open API.

Of course, I wondered about how the app was being used, but they don’t collect PII (personally identifiable information).  In the future, they plan to offer an option for patients to opt-in to share information and create a clinic dashboard for physicians to see which patients are using it and providing them with data.  And, with a new collaboration with HealthNet, consumers will be logging into the app with their HealthNet ID which will allow them to link up PII and PHI (protected health information).

So, what’s next…

  • They’ve launched in the US and France.  They’re expanding into the UK and other countries next.
  • They’re adding Spanish in Q1-2014.
  • They’ve just completed some human factor testing which will drive some UI and UX changes.
  • They’re going to do some testing and look at results with whatever data is available.
  • They’re going to try to partner with as many people as possible.

Will it move the needle around adherence?  It’s still too early to tell.  But, it’s great to see pharma testing new strategies and working in new ways with payers to try to address this challenge.

Healthcare, Marketing / Communications, mHealth, PBM / Pharmacy, Press, Technology
, , , , , , , , ,

How Aetna’s Pivoting With Healthagen – #whcc13

April 9, 2013 by George Van Antwerp 0 Comments

Do you know the term “pivot“? It’s all the rage now in terms of describing how companies continue to evolve their models with this rapidly changing business environment.

Of course, Aetna is one of the big healthcare players in the US. They’re not going to abandon a model that’s been working for well over 100 years. But, thanks to some great leadership from people like Mark Bertolini, CEO of Aetna, they’ve created a new business unit called Healthagen (building on the company they bought known mostly for iTriage). The screen shot says it all.

I got the privilege to sit down with Dr. Charles Saunders who runs Healthagen at the World Healthcare Congress in DC (#whcc13).

Charles E. Saunders, M.D., is responsible for leading the strategic diversification of Healthagen’s products, services and global opportunities. He focuses on identifying new growth opportunities and developing market strategies that can help Healthagen and Aetna profitably manage quality and cost for its customers.

Prior to joining Healthagen, Dr. Saunders served as executive in residence at Warburg Pincus, one of the world’s largest and oldest private equity firms. He has held a number of other significant leadership positions during his career, including CEO of Broadlane, Inc., President of EDS Healthcare Global Industry Solutions; Chief Medical Officer of Healtheon / WebMD; Principal of A.T. Kearney; and Executive Director of San Francisco General Hospital Managed Care Programs.

Dr. Saunders received a B.S. in biological sciences from the University of Southern California and an M.D. from Johns Hopkins University. He is board certified in Internal Medicine and Emergency Medicine and has served on the faculty of several universities, including the University of California, San Francisco; Vanderbilt University; and University of Colorado.

I also got to hear him speak right before I talked to him. (As a side note, he is a great presenter which is something that I really respect in a world of people who present too many slides, use notes, talk to the screen, and can lose you quickly.)

He hit on several key themes in his presentation that we then discussed further face-to-face:

  1. Social Caregiver Model
  2. Game Theory
  3. Digital / Mobile

One of my first questions was to really understand Healthagen and what it was set up to do. (As you can see from the screen shot below, they’re doing lots of things in this group.)

He boiled it down nicely to three things:

  1. Physician (provider) enablement
  2. Patient engagement
  3. Population Health Management IT

Our next discussion was really around why and how to create and innovate within a large company like Aetna. He reiterated what I believed that Mark Bertolini championed this new vision along with several of the other senior leaders. But, I think the key was that they recognized that issue of trying to do that internally and were willing to form a group to be different. To minimize bureaucracy for this group. And, to leverage their capital and assets to support this group. Not many big companies do this well. My impression is that Aetna is and will continue to be successful here. (Full disclosure – I own a minor number of Aetna shares and have believed this since I bought them about a year ago.)

Of course, in today’s market, there’s an explosion of innovation with questions on the short-term and long-term ROI of many initiatives and start-ups. With that in mind, Dr. Saunders pointed out that they don’t want to own everything. They want to create a plug and play platform of enablement. iTriage is a great example of this where they brought in a mobile technology with 2M downloads in 2011 and now have over 9.5M downloads of the tool (on top of massive increases in functionality and integration). You can download it here – https://itunes.apple.com/app/itriage-health-doctor-symptoms/id304696939?mt=8.

Certainly, one concern others have historically had in this space was how to own solutions and sell them to their peers (competitors). Dr. Saunders talked about their ability to do this with ActiveHealth and a perception that the industry is over that issue as long as Aetna can continue to demonstrate that they are good stewards of the data and are keeping the appropriate firewalls in place.

We wrapped up the conversation talking about the social caregiver and game theory. I think both are important in our mHealth / digital world. With the sandwhich generation, this is increasingly important. That is where Aetna is focusing…enablement of the caregiver for infants and seniors leveraging a social approach. This reminds me of their recent announcement of a pilot with PatientsLikeMe. We also talked about game theory and the role of that in healthcare which is a common theme from my discussion with Keas this morning and a theme from the overall conference.

It should be interesting to watch Dr. Saunders and his team and how Aetna continues to pivot.

Consumerism, Events, Healthcare, Leadership, Managed Care, Marketing / Communications, Methodology, mHealth, Press, Technology, Value Propositions
, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

#WHCC13 Interview: Content + Community + Competition = Keas

April 9, 2013 by George Van Antwerp 0 Comments

I had the opportunity to sit down this morning with Josh Stevens who is the CEO of Keas.

“Keas is the most engaging wellness program in the workplace. Keas promotes healthy behavior and teamwork with interactive media that delivers relevant, individualized content to hundreds of thousands of employees. Keas has a proven track record of supporting corporate HR in increasing retention, productivity, teamwork, collaboration, and competitiveness. By rewarding people for achieving simple exercise and nutrition goals, employee health is improved and overall healthcare costs are decreased.”

He is a passionate believer in using fun and social to drive change in healthcare with a focus initially on wellness and then moving upstream to other challenges like disease management.

As CEO of Keas, the market leader in corporate wellness, Stevens is responsible for leading the development and market adoption of the company’s breakthrough wellness platform and applications.

Stevens has over 20 years of experience in product, sales, marketing, and is a recognized leader in driving high-value product experiences that deliver customer delight and investor’s valuation growth.

Prior to Keas, Stevens was Vice President of e-commerce at YouSendIt, Senior Vice President of strategy and business development at TicketsNow, and General Manager of e-commerce at AOL. Prior to his GM role at AOL, Stevens held a variety of leadership positions in business development, product marketing, product management, and corporate strategy.

Some of you may have seen Keas over the years. They were founded by Adam Bosworth who was responsible for Google Health at one point. They’ve gone through a few evolutions, but it seems like they’ve hit on a working model leveraging several principles that we discussed:

  1. Being intellectually nimble
  2. Developing holistic and integrated solutions
  3. Using content, community, and competition to drive engagement
  4. Building social networks around health
  5. Integrating into the consumer’s experience to be seamless (e.g., single sign on)
  6. Recognizing that change is dependent upon corporate culture changing also
  7. BYOD (bring your own device) meaning that they can integrate with anyone with an open API
  8. Realizing that while some people (like me) might want to focus on data in a Quantified Self manner, we’re only 15% of the population

While Josh isn’t a healthcare native, that seems like a good thing. I’ve seen a lot of people try to come into healthcare from the outside. Most of them fail because they get overwhelmed by the regulation or frustrated by the challenges or stick too much to what they personally think should work. In the hour we spent together, I didn’t get that sense.

I’m looking forward to learning more about Keas and trying out the tools myself. One of the most fascinating points was that they get people to engage 15 times per month. I told him that that was a ridiculous number in healthcare. We went on to talk about his hiring a team from the gaming industry and that they were used to being tied to repeat visits not simply getting people to download the tool.

IMHO – if you could get 50% of people to engage twice a month with a tool (and sustain that engagement rate), you would be a hero.

As I’ve talked about in my posts about CVS and as I tweeted earlier today from the conference, companies need to engage the worker at the workplace to transform healthcare. Josh gets that key point.

“Today’s employees spend most of their daily lives at work and companies can have a huge impact on improving overall health by creating a culture of wellness at work. That culture starts with Keas’ fun, engaging platform, which helps employees become healthier, more productive and more engaged at work, and in life.” (press release)

Healthcare, Innovation, mHealth, Press, Social Media, Technology, Value Propositions
, , , , , , , , , , ,

What I Learned Day One at the mHealth Summit #mhs12

December 4, 2012 by George Van Antwerp 3 Comments

I only had time to attend one day of the mHealth Summit in DC. Overall, it seemed like a well attended event with a good vendor area.

But, what I saw left me with concerns about the maturity of the space.

1. Every vendor has their own portal. There was no idea of convergence or sensitivity to the care manager or provider or patient having to access multiple sites to collect data. Of course, there were a few exceptions.

2. There’s still some heavy lifting for the consumer, but it’s getting better. For example, one food application lets you scan in your food but that calorie counter isn’t integrated into any activity monitor. Another application was trying to monitor social activity for part of their depression algorithm but they weren’t leveraging the data sitting on the phone itself – numbers of calls, movement, etc.

3. There are some really creative solutions being tried but the scale of the studies is small. I was excited to see what was being done with obesity, but the case studies were less than 150 participants.

4. There are a lot of non-healthcare people jumping in which is great from an innovation perspective, but healthcare is tricky and making sure to apply consumer literacy filters to the clinical guidance you get is important. For example, I asked one vendor why he had several chronic diseases covered but ignored high cholesterol. He pointed out that he had a heart disease component, but IMHO I don’t know many people with high cholesterol that would self select into heart disease.

On the other hand, there were some really positive things.

1. The user interface on a lot of these is very elegant.

2. The devices are getting smaller and smaller with a few disposables on the way.

3. The data captured and reporting is really interesting and insightful although I’m not sure how it will all be used by patients, physicians, or companies.

4. Technology is much more scalable than people centric strategies which is critical in the US and globally.

5. Several companies really get it and are focused on device neutral approaches for capturing and disseminating data.

Overall, it reminded me of some of my concerns about the Health 2.0 movement a few years ago in terms of business models and distribution models. But, keep the innovation coming. It’s fascinating and thought provoking. But, there will definitely be a shakeout in the years to come.

Events, General Thoughts, Healthcare, Innovation, Technology
, ,