Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Interview with Dan Hickey, SVP of Products at Alliance Health (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s switch to the other side of the equation – to the consumers. In your networks, what are the behaviors of the consumers? What are they doing there?

Dan Hickey: Some of our consumers are in a discovery mode, where they are looking at information around symptoms and early diagnosis, or troubleshooting issues they may have managing their conditions, and they may be looking at content we created or content we created from other sources. We work with Mayo Clinic and with Joslin Diabetes Center.

Or they could be engaged with content that was created by the community. We realize not everybody wants to join a social network and create connections and friendships. So, we allow our consumers to choose what kind of concept they want to consume and how they want to consume it. A lot of what happens is the discovery on the sites. As the consumer begins to become more engaged and begins to self-manage their condition, there is a host of tools. We have trackers that allow consumers to enter their glucose level or their A1c level or other key indicators, to begin to more actively manage from a patient perspective. So, you get a certain percentage of the population of our audience members that will become more involved.

Some users are also creating friendships and connections once they get more involved. This is a fairly large segment, since we are a socially powered platform. A good percentage of our people are looking through, talking and engaging in sustained conversations. They may start off on one topic, like a symptom or a difficulty, maintaining a good outlook on life or healthy eating habits, for example. That conversation could evolve and move on to other topics – friendships happen, connections happen, people create resources for themselves. Also on the tracking side, as people get into self-management, that is where mobile apps come into play. We look at mobile apps as a kind of a signal to us of when the empowered, self-managed patients are really involved with our brand. That is when they are using their phones to stay in contact not only with our brand, but with their friends, connections, and information sources.

SM: Let’s talk about the mobile apps. Obviously your most popular connect site is diabetes, right?

DH: That is correct. But you would be surprised. Diabetic Connect is not our most popular app. Most of the activity we have is in mental health conditions, which in some cases are conditions and in some cases diseases. These are conditions that are 24/7, where the person with depression or anxiety deals with it throughout the day. Our apps are particularly helpful for those community members who need support from other community members on a 24/7 basis. Certainly our depression community is one that you get after the mental health ones. In the mental health apps, there are anxiety, bipolar, teen depression, adult depression, etc. After that you would have diabetes being the most popular. Diabetes and arthritis are at the top of the list as well.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Interview with Dan Hickey, SVP of Products at Alliance Health
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