Podcast: Mobile Health CEO John Halloran

Mobile Health

Transcript

Mark:

Welcome to People Tech, the podcast of the HCM Technology Report. I’m Mark Feffer.

Mark:

My guest today is John Halloran, CEO of Mobile Health. Using proprietary technology, they help employers build healthy cultures and programs tailored to their workforce and guide employees toward well-being. We’ll talk about business technology and of course well-being on this edition of People Tech. John, it’s nice to see you. Thanks for joining me. Could you tell me a bit about Mobile Health?

John:

Sure. So Mobile Health was founded back in 2012. We had a very interesting experience where we were in the talent management space. I had founded a company called Worldwide Compensation. That became part of Taleo, remember Taleo now, Oracle HCM. And we were having a lunch with one of our clients and letting them know that we had been acquired by Taleo. And I think Taleo was in the process of getting acquired by Oracle. And the HR director at the time said, gee, if you could only do for wellness and well-being what you did for employee compensation, we’d really have something because my prior company was a global compensation company that sort of took all the localized rules around comp and benefits and sort of baked it into a platform.

John:

And I said, well, I used to work for the health plans when I first got out of college. So I know a little bit about this. So tell me more. And he said, well, we’ve implemented a wellness wellbeing solution and it’s clunky, there’s three or four different websites to go to, it operates slowly. And we got to talking about, wouldn’t it be really interesting to bring a wellbeing and rewards platform in a mobile first environment.

John:

Now, remember Mark, this was 2012. So we were still getting questions about, well, what about my employees that don’t have mobile devices? And we were pretty confident at the time that all their employees had mobile devices. They just didn’t tell their employer at the time. So that was the innovation, was how do we take all of the wellness rewards, all the wellness communications, all of the different programs around wellbeing, clinical, rewards for an employer, and put that all on a mobile device where it could take advantage of things like step tracking or it can take advantage of things like location services. So just a better experience all around. And that was back in 2012. And here we are in 2021. Amazing how fast time goes.

Mark:

You guys recently made some moves, had a big announcement. You want to share that?

John:

I did. Yeah. So we’re very excited, we’re honored, Anthem. We have a very unique technology platform and approach to the market. So we sort of have a capability where employers or partners can use our platform through and through and they can private label it. So we’re probably the largest private label wellness well-being platform. We also have a capability where we can embed our modules inside somebody else’s experience. And so what basically happens is that partner in this case, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield can inherit all of the customizability that we bring. So we say, we’re the only low code platform in wellbeing and rewards, meaning we can radically customize the programs. We can radically customize the incentives, the communications, and I can keep it all on a single line of code and not need any developers to do that. So it goes very, very quickly.

John:

We just did a really interesting one for EY. We did a recharge challenge for them and KPMG, two big audit consulting firms. They have a lot of professionals that have been stuck in apartments in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, through the pandemic and feeling isolated and alone. And how could we create a holistic wellbeing solution and turn it into a team challenge, right? And so that was their idea. Not ours. We use the tools, no engineers required. We help build them, the team-based challenge that they were interested in. They launched it. It was successful. They had great engagement participation, and they look to us as we help them facilitate their strategy so that they can retain a strong culture even coming out of the pandemic.

Mark:

Now, speaking of COVID, that’s had an obvious impact on life, work, health, pretty much everything. So how has your landscape, the landscape for wellbeing changed over the last say year and a half?

John:

We’ve accelerated. I think that it’s been such a dramatic time in the economy and the world where if you’re a restaurant owner, it was really hard. If you’re the owner of a digital health platform, we’ve grown like crazy. And part of that is at the very beginning, I talked about this low code solutions. We were one of the first companies that come out with a COVID-19 symptom checker application for our clients. So every employee, if they were going into an office, before we had a vaccine, could go in and pass or fail a symptom questionnaire and then get access to resources. So we just made that part of the solution. We said, you can either buy it standalone, or you can include this in. And now what that’s done, Mark is that’s morphed into, we do a vaccine card tracking.

John:

So we have employers that will use the platform that we have to track, Hey, I’m going to upload my vaccine card that says I’ve gotten it. And then the employer sees analytics and they know who’s complied and who hasn’t. And those who haven’t are getting tested every day, or getting tested on whatever frequency the employer is requesting. So it’s created more needs of the employer for more technology. And because of our ability to be nimble, we’ve been able to help our employer clients through this. And we’re really proud of that. That’s why we built the platform the way we did.

Mark:

Now, obviously in dealing with challenges like that, you’ve got employees, you’ve got employers, you’ve got providers of one sort or another all sort of swirling around. What’s technology’s role in sort of bringing solutions, wellbeing solutions to a company’s workforce?

John:

Yeah. I think you’re right on something there, Mark. We’re going to go live, we’re going to have almost 50,000 employers that we’re going to be bringing well-being to with this new contract with Anthem. And if you think about it, we’re able to now because of technology, take something that used to be very expensive, only the largest employers could really afford it and do it well, which is kind of usually how the innovations happen, and we’re going to be able to bring well-being to the masses. And technology and the approach that we’ve used to build the technology is really allowing us to make that happen. So whether you’re a small company, a mid-sized company, or you’re an EY or KPMG, you can get access to the best in class wellbeing and rewards capabilities that we all know through the pandemic, stress, resiliency, burnout, financial stress, clinical.

John:

A lot of people are deferring care. People that need mammograms and colonoscopies, I don’t want to get gross, but they’ve deferred that because of COVID. But the risk of getting cancer hasn’t gone away. So we need to go out and remind them, Hey, you still need to do this. You still need to stay on your statin and you still need to get your asthma inhaler, you still need to do all the things to keep yourself healthy. It’s more important now than ever. So I would say the focus now is very clearly on wellbeing.

John:

I heard one physician say at a meeting with him, he said, why wellbeing? Right. He said, well, if you had a fleet of trucks, you’d change the oil. Right. And that was sort of a crass way to put it, but focusing on health, I think, as a parent, and a husband, and a worker, business owner, there’s just a lot in the world that you have to organize and keep on top of, and oftentimes what people do is they let their health slip, right? Because they’re running to their kid’s game or they’re going to the PTA meeting or whatever. So to be there to remind each individual of the things they need to do to maintain good health, it’s never been more important than now.

John:

I mean, going into the pandemic, if you were healthy, you had a much better chance of surviving COVID-19 if you got it without a vaccine and having an okay outcome. If you had comorbidities, you were in real trouble. Right. So I would just say the focus on health has never been more important. And I think it’s a corporate issue. We see more and more boards talking about wellbeing. There’s been a lot of focus on mental health. But mental health is connected to physical health, which is connected to emotional health. So it’s all connected. And I think that’s the recognition of the industry, is that wellbeing is truly holistic. It’s not just physical, it’s not just mental. It’s very holistic. You have to sort of approach the whole person from all angles and give them support in all pillars of wellbeing.

Mark:

Can you tell me about your relationship with employers and how you work with them to make sure they’re getting what they need and that it’s,

John:

Sure.

Mark:

Being implemented effectively?

John:

Yeah. Yeah. And again, a part of this goes back to that. Our calling card is, and we were very clear with our… You almost get a self-selected group of employers. I think there’s some employers that want to go to known industry companies and just say, Hey, just give me what you got. We’ll go with it. We’re a little different. We tend to get the more adventurous HR and benefits folks that want to customize things. And so there’ll be wanting to deal with things like, how do I organize all the programs that we have at this employer and how do I get them in front of the people who need them at the right time? And so this is where we use personalization and AI, artificial intelligence to surface different programs and different opportunities for individuals based on data, based on the signal data that we’re getting.

John:

And so we measure that outcomes. I mean, we get engagement data. How many people participated in the diabetes management program before we did that? How many participated after? How many people got mammograms before we sent out reminders and incentives targeted at those people who needed them? How many people did it after? And we did a couple of great studies with some large employers at National Business Group on Health and had great results.

John:

Again, I think this comes down to, if you can target a reminder to somebody, everyone knows they need to do it. They just get busy. So if you can target the reminder, if there’s an incentive included, and if there’s some resource that helps me figure out where to go get the service done, I’m making it easier for the employee to do the thing that’s good for their health anyway. And that’s really the role of digital, is how do we just remove all the friction because wow, does healthcare have a lot of friction, Mark. There’s just so many friction points. There’s health plans, there’s doctor’s offices, there’s tele-health, there’s pharmacies. Right. And the average person has a really hard time navigating all that. So to the extent that we can sort of show them where to go a little bit, I think that’s really helpful in the final equation.

Mark:

Where do you think this is all going, over the next several years? Assuming COVID gets tamped down. But we’re looking at new ways to work or new ways of working more, remote employees, whole lot of changes. How do you think that’s going to impact your side of the business over the next, say two or three years?

John:

Yeah. I’m really excited and bullish. I think if you look at just the healthcare system in general, it’s really expensive. It’s pretty hard to access. I think the average person tries to avoid it because, what’s the latest data on from Kaiser Family Foundation? I think the average out-of-pocket on a health plan is like eight or 10,000 bucks. And the average person has 1,000 bucks saved, right? So it’s almost unaffordable, right? So what gets me excited and gets me out of bed in the morning is I think mobile technology holds the key to solve a lot of this. Right. Whether it’s your activity, whether it’s your blood pressure, whether it’s your blood sugar, you can now, if you think about it, when you go to a physician’s office and you get your annual physical, you step on the scale, they take your blood pressure, you open wide and do whatever they do for that.

John:

And then say how you’re feeling. Well, you can do that every day using a mobile device. You can step on a scale. They’ll tell you what you weigh, it’ll tell you what your blood pressure is. It’ll track your blood sugar if you’re at risk for diabetes. And then you can use all that data to sort of predict, what’s next for you. Hey, you should be more active. Hey, you should worry about your diet. Hey, you need to go see a doctor because you’ve put on weight, your blood pressure is higher and your blood sugar spiking, we think something’s going on. So I’m excited because I think the technology is going to make this all more personalized, all about you. And then it’ll be sort of… I liken the mobile phone to being the dash light warning on your car. I think it’s going to turn into that, where you’re going to know what’s going on. You’ll have some symptoms. You can connect to a doctor via telehealth.

John:

I mean, the other thing that the pandemic has done is I think everyone knows now what telehealth is. If they don’t, they should. Because you shouldn’t show up in the doctor’s office if you don’t have to. You can connect to somebody with the touch of a button and that’s appropriate for some things and not for others. But I think just more access, more personalization, more all about me. And I think that will bring costs down. And I think it’ll be more accessible for the average person. And I think they’ll know what they need to do to stay healthy. So God forbid when the next pandemic comes, we’re a healthier nation or a healthier world and we can tolerate it better. Right. I mean, that’s really, one of the things we discovered is our health wasn’t very good. And a lot of people got really, really sick and a lot of people died and that’s a shame. And it’s awful. And how do we do better next time? And these devices I think hold a big part of the key for that.

Mark:

John, thanks very much for being here. It was great talking to you.

John:

Yeah, likewise. Thank you.

Mark:

My guest today has been John Halloran, CEO of Mobile Health, and this has been People Tech, the podcast of the HCM Technology Report. We’re a publication of Recruiting Daily. We’re also a part of Evergreen podcasts to see all of their programs visit www.evergreenpodcasts.com. And to keep up with HR Technology, visit the HCM Technology Report every day. We’re the most trusted source of news in the HR tech industry. Find us at www.hcmtechnologyreport.com. I’m Mark Feffer

Image: Mobile Health

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