The use of mobile applications to help manage members' health and wellness are gaining traction with payers, as they look to connect to their members via mobile technology many already use everyday.
UnitedHealth Group offers its employees a mobile health app, OptimizeMe, that challenges them to reach health and fitness goals, which they can track on their smart phones and post progress and results to Facebook, said Richard Migliori, MD, executive vice president and chief medical officer of UnitedHealth Group.
"Mobile health is an opportunity to help the healthcare system perform better simply by becoming part of the consumer's lifestyle and also part of the physician's workflow," Migliori said Dec. 5 at a mobile health conference.
Using OptimizeMe, physicians can monitor the adherence of their patients to care plans and healthy behavior changes. It is designed to make achieving fitness, nutrition and lifestyle goals fun. It includes a gaming element whereby employees can receive virtual badges or earn points based on the outcomes for specific behavioral changes.
For example, employees who have high readings for blood sugar, cholesterol and body mass index are required to participate in a wellness program to achieve normal readings. Depending on their level of success, they may earn points toward discounts on their insurance premiums for the following year.
Available for use on iPhone, Android and Windows Phone devices, OptimizeMe also supports messages between challenge participants.
Mobile health is a means of connecting consumers and deliverers of health care to actionable information, Migliori said. Drawing on UnitedHealth Group's well of analytics it has developed over the years can help patients drill down to the issues that they have.
"The problem has been getting people to pay attention to that information," he said. Now, since personal mobile communications are so ingrained in the lifestyle of so many, mobile health "can simply jump on that," he said.
At WellPoint, the company currently has a pilot program with 100 Verizon employees use the telecommunications company's Thunderbolt smart phones with video technology capability to access a nurse 24/7, said Anthony Nguyen, MD, senior vice president for care management at WellPoint.
"This capability will let someone take their smart phone out, click on an icon, and up comes a nurse that will enable health decision making. This is personalized, readily accessible and convenient care," he said.
The Verizon pilot leverages an existing program that WellPoint provides to some members that allows a parent, for example to access the nurse when a child sprains his ankle while playing soccer at a field to determine whether to go to an emergency room.
WellPoint already has 500 nurses equipped with webcams on their laptops or desktops so they can conduct a video chat, Nguyen said.
"When individuals call in, we offer to do a health risk assessment via the webcam. I might not be able to see you, but you can see me. And that helps to personalize the relationship," he said.
In general, personalized care is not necessarily expensive, and the technology is readily available. With about 40 percent of its members using smart phones, WellPoint can communicate with its members much more effectively and in a more personalized fashion than it could with analog technology.
WellPoint's pilot with Verizon is part of testing a digital chronic care management platform that the company is developing for use with its employees and will launch next year around key chronic diseases and later to health and wellness, said John Stratton, executive vice president and chief operating officer of Verizon Wireless.
"We're at the beginning stage of deploying these pilots inside Verizon to assist employees who are in managed care programs to enable them to have a high-quality video consultation with their care team," he said. Verizon hopes to improve its employees' health and reduce its healthcare costs.
The platform is comprised of capabilities for telemedicine with added functionality for mobility, broadband networks and cloud-based data centers. With it, mobile devices can deliver personalized programs that assist with food choices, reminders to exercise, alerts in the event that biometric readings go beyond the desired range and to provide a dashboard with which to track progress.