What we have tried has not worked; we need a new solution. Current efforts in disease management and wellness have not made a significant, measurable impact on improving population health. We rely on once-per-year health risk appraisals, one-size-fits-all educational strategies, and expensive telephonic coaching. We have collectively achieved dismal engagement rates and only marginal improvement in population health outcomes.

What is needed is a new way to effectively engage individuals in health behavior for the long term – a way that understands and embraces the uniqueness of individuals in terms of their health, behavior, motivations, and needs, and one that delivers proven, effective action plans and support that will engage and enhance an individual in improving health in the short- and long-term.

Healthrageous understands and delivers the new way today. We have a proven way of changing health behavior. The solution is:

• Continuous: Automated quantitative and qualitative monitoring and simplified input
• Personalized: Plans and support are unique at the individual level
• Proven: It is a method with a proven clinical foundation and actual results from a randomized controlled trial
• Always available: Leverages smart phones and other always-on, always-available tools

The core of our solution is dynamic personalization and expert knowledge. Healthrageous is combining the kind of personalization technology used by successful companies like Amazon, Netflix, and Pandora with the best behavioral and consumer marketing science. We call this Dynamic Personalization. It is built upon our:

• Evidence-based understanding of people
• Vast scientific experience and effective treatment plan knowledge
• Technology expertise that allows us to integrate monitoring devices and personal devices, such as smart phones and personal computers
• Philosophy of continuous improvement and testing, meaning that each individual interaction gets better at engaging and supporting health behavior change over time
• Commitment to using sophisticated quantitative analysis, enabled by machine learning

Dynamic personalization is the future; Healthrageous is leading the way. We believe Dynamic Personalization is the solution for how we will finally crack the code on achieving outrageous engagement, measurable health improvement, and cost containment. Check out Healthrageous today! For more on the topic of Dynamic Personalization, please refer to our white paper on our Web site.

In a previous post, our CEO talked about why disease management (DM) wasn’t living up to its hype. Sure, it’s easy to critique what’s not meeting expectations, but what about delivering something better? We think we have done just that. Here are a few points to help you understand what we’re doing and why we believe we’ll succeed in our twin goals of improving health and lowering healthcare costs.

• Disease management, evolved. Many of us at Healthrageous have designed and delivered DM solutions or tried to make them work. We learned what was successful and what needed improvement. At Healthrageous, we kept what was working and added what was missing. You could call it DM 2.0, but we thought it deserved a new name, which we call personalized connected health. Sure it’s another buzzword, but it’s one that reflects where the industry needs to go.
• Addressing chronic diseases and wellness. Usually, a wellness program tries to help the self-starters improve their health and lifestyle while a chronic disease program tries to help people manage difficult, lifelong conditions like diabetes or hypertension. Our users can start from either point, but they’ll find that we deal with both. People can get on board to address one particular issue, but they’ll soon see that we can help them with many other health and wellness related challenges because they’re all inter-related.
• Continuous and real-time input and feedback. Most programs take one-time data or occasional inputs to create a user profile and then deliver advice for that static profile. The lack of updated information and delay in delivery of relevant advice limits what can be accomplished. We’ve designed a system that thrives on continuous real-time input of health information – from a variety of personal devices and subjective feedback – and continually tweaks and offers the best possible advice and experience for each individual. Nothing is stale. It’s real-time health for a real-time consumer.
• A dynamic personalized experience that grows in capability. With an expanding base of users, we know about the individual as well as the masses. Our platform will recognize patterns, understand individual preferences, and make predictions to serve up an experience that has led to success for people with similar profiles. The more an individual participates, the smarter the platform gets.
• A technology base that reflects the real, heterogeneous world. Being device agnostic, we can plug in most any device that employers or individuals want to use. On the other end, we deliver our programs according to what works for each individual – via web, smartphone, email, text, or all of the above. Users define the experience and can move seamlessly between interfaces.

So what does all this really mean? Imagine Healthrageous as an automated personal advisor and coach who never sleeps, who listens to you, who keeps your information private, and who knows what you need, when you need it, and how you need it. But don’t think that we’re all about computers and automation. We plug in real people, allowing individuals to create their own social networks including friends, groups, teams and broader communities. Together, the smarts of the dynamic platform; the real-time biometric data; the automated, personalized coaching; and the support of user-defined social networks deliver an experience that is capable of overcoming the obstacles to improving health.

It may sound like science fiction, but we have it today, and it will only get better with time. We’re confident. We didn’t pick a name like A Little Bit Better Health Services. We chose Healthrageous because we think the experience that we provide is how everyone will come to expect health in the future. Bold? Sure. Cocky? We don’t think so, as we built our system on clinical trials and years of experience. What we are is confident. Give us a call and we’ll let you see just what we are doing.

Not keeping up with the Joneses

Much happened in the intervening 15 years since DM burst upon the scene. The doctor/patient 1:1 paradigm that was common then shifted to today’s nurse call center model where one individual reaches out and connects with many. We also learned two important lessons from our work: 1) engagement has to be baked into the services in order to succeed; and 2) whether the messenger is a doctor or a nurse, the message has to be appealing to the target in order to achieve the desired results.

Obviously, something had to change.

Re-calibrating DM around wellness isn’t the answer

Many of the DM players that seeded the market years ago were the first to move away from targeting the diseased to going after “healthier” individuals. Wellness became DM’s central offering. While this shift allowed DM players to readjust the baseline, it further obfuscated ROI calculations. The shift also couldn’t prop up DM’s inherent systemic flaws. These include:

• One size doesn’t fit all – the non-personalized approach doesn’t work
• Doctor-, patient-, and coach–centric solutions focus on the wrong individual – the focus needs to be on the consumer … you and me
• Health solutions won’t win by default – people are initiating their own searches for health without third-party payers being the catalyst
• Traditional communication and interaction isn’t very effective–some people don’t talk on phones or open their snail mail
• Generic profiles of consumers and their needs aren’t enough – Madison Avenue knows more about people than doctors, nurses, or psychologists
• Many healthcare companies aren’t cutting edge anymore – one of the emerging healthcare companies in America today is Nike

Learning from DM, trying to do better

There are now 140 million Americans with one or more chronic diseases, so the need for a DM substitute persists. Something must meet the demand in terms of providing quality service, keeping costs reasonable, and helping people become healthier. Healthrageous is attempting to offer a bridge to those folks frustrated with DM while being ever mindful of the inherent flaws that brought down or stalled our predecessors. Let us know how we are doing.