Inspired by the links between activity, meditation and wellbeing, the country's largest mutual insurer is sponsoring an app to help its members and the public take on stress.
Health Care Services Corporation, operator of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois and others, is approaching the one year mark for a unique digital health product: Centered, a free iPhone app trying to bring a "holistic approach to stress management by combining exercise and mindful meditation."
Available to anyone with an iPhone 5s and later models, Centered works partly as an activity tracker, counting a user's daily steps and weekly distance walked, and partly as a guide to simple meditation, encouraging users to set aside a few minutes each day to just stop, breathe and not think about work, bills, traffic, errands and such. Two semicircles measure progress towards goals for walking and for meditation, and they come together when they're met.
With a plethora of choices for activity tracking apps available, "we saw an unmet need to combine activity tracking and mindful meditation," said Darren Rodgers, HCSC's chief marketing officer.
"There are a lot of wellness apps, and they seemed to fall into two camps, activity and stress reduction," said Rodgers. "We thought that since there are linkages between the two, we wanted to create something that combines them." The app is compatible with Apple HealthKit as well.
HCSC first considered the potential benefits of simple meditation exercises in a study with researchers from the Adler School of Professional Psychology in Chicago and the University of Massachusetts Medical School. They found that abbreviated mindful meditation exercises were associated with a reduction in an individual's stress and an increase in their ability to focus. Likewise, regular exercise, even a half-hour of walking each day, can help reduce stress and support cardiovascular health. "Centered encourages positive behavior change," Rodgers said.
If it seems odd that a health insurer serving such middle America states as Illinois and Texas is promoting meditation, it really shouldn't be, Rodgers said.
For one, HCSC's large employer clients include Chicago-headquartered companies with large workforces in diverse and progressive states, such as Boeing, which has 79,000 employees in Washington State and 17,000 in California.
And the app is designed for anyone, beyond the insurer's membership, as a sort of community wellness initiative.
"Centered is a bit of experiment to see if we have something well received," Rodgers said. "We'll look to the future to see if we can develop another app." (HCSC's Blues companies do each have their own health plan apps, offering basic member services.)
Although Rodgers would not divulge information on how many people are using or have downloaded Centered, he said the consumer response looks positive. The app has 107 ratings and an average of 3.5 stars (four for its current version, updated in late April).
HCSC is not the only health insurer promoting meditation these days. Aetna, under CEO and meditation-devotee Mark Bertolini, launched two workplace services in 2012, Mindfulness at Work Viniyoga Stress Reduction, and has recruited around one-third of its own employees to a yoga or meditation class.
Perhaps one of the larger barriers an insurer like HCSC faces in promoting mindfulness is the public stigma that can be associated with health insurance companies. In the iTunes store, Centered is copyrighted to Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois, which a few reviewers have noticed and at least one seemed averse to.
"This is decent on the Apple Watch," wrote one reviewer in April. "But I decided to delete it because it created by a Blue Cross subsidiary, and I don't want my personal/private mood and mindfulness information in in the hands of a healthcare company." (HCSC does promise that the data from the app is not shared with third parties.)
Others take that sponsorship with a grain of salt, but also rate Centered as good if not better than other meditation apps. "Once I opened it and saw the affiliation to a health insurance company, I was skeptical," wrote another reviewer in May. "After checking the privacy policy, I decided to download it...I actually use it daily and find it incredibly helpful."