CareWare 2011 conference, Aarhus,Denmark www.carewareweb.dk

1. Improving people’s health online
Trying to understand what works
and what doesn’t
1 © Keas Inc., 2010

2. Why do we need online help
• Three fundamental trends today
– Increasing percentage of aged population
– More cost
• Increasing expenses dealing with diseases due to
more sophisticated technology
– Worse health habits
• Decreased exercise, increased obesity, worse diet,
and more stress especially for aging population –
Heart disease, alcoholism, depression, diabetes,
back pain, joint problems, and , surprisingly, up to
40% of cancer
2 © Keas Inc., 2010

3. Let’s recap
• More and more people reaching the age of
chronic disease
• More and more likely to get them (bad
exercise, diet, and stress habits account
for up to 50% of diseases)
• More and more expensive to treat
• And more and more likely last a long time
3 © Keas Inc., 2010

4. What do we do
• The solution is not to get more effective at
treating the diseases – This is treating the
symptom and will still be increasingly
expensive and require increasingly more
human help
• The solution is to avoid people getting
these diseases
– Improve people’s health habits –
– Reward them for practicing safe health habits
4 © Keas Inc., 2010

5. How do we do this – Multiple ways
• Lots of coaching at doctors and hospitals
– Human health coaches
• Email reminders to do the right thing
• Online coaches driven by clinical
guidelines
• Or … a more effective online experience
5 © Keas Inc., 2010

6. You have to start with psychology
• You need to start by asking why will people
really want to use this (Facebook for health)
– It enables privacy while allowing public engagement
– It rewards effort each time the user makes an effort
– It involves social obligation
– It is socially rewarding
– It doesn’t give negative feedback (They leave!)
– It is fun! People in control of the time they invest.
– People want to use it. Ideally it is addictive because
that builds good habits and reinforcement
6 © Keas Inc., 2010

7. Have human coaches
• Very expensive
• People don’t control the time they invest
– Most people don’t have the time to meet with the
frequency required
• No social obligation
– Doesn’t harness social obligation - I listen to my
wife/kids, not to my insurer
• Negative feedback. Can be embarrassing because I may
have missed by goals
• It is rarely “fun”
7 © Keas Inc., 2010

8. Email reminders
• Potential Privacy Issues
• Easy for users to ignore (Spam factor)
unless mail promises something
fun/interesting to do
• No rewards model for doing the work
• No social support
• No social obligations
8 © Keas Inc., 2010

9. On line coaches driven by clinical guidelines
• We built this at Keas – A Doctor’s dream
• Provided personalized interpretation of
your data (red/yellow/green) along with
personalized interpretation for you
• Reminded you what to do each week
• Relevant materials to learn each week
• Integrated with and personalized by online
labs
9 © Keas Inc., 2010

10. It didn’t work
• Most people leave within 3 weeks
• Too clinical – Not fun
• No social obligation – There was a feed,
but without a common goal between
people who knew each other, it failed
• Negative feedback
• Didn’t reward effort in real time
10 © Keas Inc., 2010

11. Don’t use doctors to change health habits
• Too demanding of time
– 20 page questionnaires, 10 pages of content
• Antithesis of fun
– Content is dry, no reward for each effort made
– Questionnaires ask large number of questions no
normal user knows (your LDL/HDL ratio)
• Negative Feedback
– You’re in the red or even yellow depressing
• No social obligation
11 © Keas Inc., 2010

12. Make it a game
• Facebook meets Zynga for health
• Reward each effort with game mechanics
• Add social obligation
• Reward social engagement
• Never ever tell people what to do, let them
decide what to do, but pick their choices!!
• And watch 100 times the engagement at
1/10 the cost
12 © Keas Inc., 2010

13. Let’s see this in action
• A Quick demo of Keas
13 © Keas Inc., 2010

14. This is what Keas is doing now
• Same engine – Personalized profile/rules
• Customers ask for more to-do’s
– They choose to do the right activities
• Customers ask for more content to learn
– They choose to learn the relevant information
• Customers incredibly active on the web
and the feeds – 20-25% post
14 © Keas Inc., 2010

15. Drastically Different Engagement
15 © Keas Inc., 2010

16. In Summary
• Given the three health trends coming, we
must figure out how to improve people’s
health habits online
• Traditional approaches, even online ones,
are unlikely to improve consumer health
habits and may be ruinously expensive
16 © Keas Inc., 2010

17. I n Summary
• You can lower your health costs and
improve the populations health
• You can reduce the incidence of chronic
disease
• You can do this cost-effectively harnessing
the 21st century technology
• You cannot do this if doctors design it
• You must make it fun and engaging
17 © Keas Inc., 2010