Technology

The rapidly changing landscape for personal management of health and wellness – what’s your mobile strategy?

Here at Medullan, over the past five years we have had the good fortune of working with a number of clients across a number of businesses to create products and services that our customers offer to their customers to help individuals manage their own health or their own wellness.

Along the way we are seeing a dramatic change in the channels through which these offerings can be delivered:  It started out via face to face interactions between consumers and health providers.  Next was the capability for phone interactions with wellness coaches or clinicians.  Soon, there was access to tools and content at the job site through personal computers or kiosks.  Before long, access to these tools was extended to the home through laptops and high-speed internet.  Remote monitoring has long been a staple for the sickest among us, but at long last we are seeing a massive upsurge in the ability for mobile telephones to deliver high quality data and user experiences on the go for ALL healthcare consumers.

Combined with the relentless focus on moderating the healthcare cost trend, the incredible growth in the capability of mobile devices – devices which have permeated the population much more extensively than computers, and which users tend to carry with them everywhere – will certainly improve the business case for the next generation of innovative mobile products and services to help people manage their own health and – overall – to be healthier.  Early adopters have been using commercially available mobile activity tracking applications and nutrition tracking applications for over a year.  As these investments start to show a return – either by helping people stay fit and thereby gaining credibility and creating customer loyalty (not to mention winning more customers through word of mouth), or by demonstrating a return on investment to health plans or employers – more innovations will come.

The key to creating products and services that will provide the biggest return on investment is not to simply create a mobile app for the iPhone in a “me too” strategy.  Rather, businesses must take a step back and understand what tasks your customers really want to be able to conduct via a mobile platform.

The end result is a win-win for customers and health providers – more choice of tools to help customers to manage their health (with more access through more channels), and more engaged and loyal customers.

The key to creating products and services that will provide the biggest return on investment is not to simply create a mobile app for the iPhone in a “me too” strategy.  Rather, businesses must take a step back and understand what tasks your customers really want to be able to conduct via a mobile platform, to understand how those needs reflect your business’ current capabilities, and what existing capabilities can be extended (or what new capabilities can be created) to the mobile channel.

For those who do this well, the mobile channel will open opportunities to capture large numbers of new customers.

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