Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Interview with Dan Hickey, SVP of Products at Alliance Health (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: The situation that scares me a bit is a “blind leading the blind” situation.

Dan Hickey: That view doesn’t give the consumer enough credit. In survey after survey, consumers say that their doctors are their most trusted people in their health ecosystem. Expert advice would be next to that, and peers come in third. If you look at the e-commerce space, all the consumer has to deal with is getting the best deal – be that Amazon or Walmart.com, for example. Consumers are very savvy now, being able to sort and sift through information, and there are rating tools and the ability to leave comments. Our communities tend to be self-policing. When somebody comes up with a radical view, our community would be very quick and influential in saying, “Wait a minute. I don’t think you should consider this. I think you should check with your doctor.” I also don’t think we have community members out there trying to push a particular viewpoint.

SM: What I want to push back on is depression. Diabetes is a slightly more concrete thing. But when you look at depression, these are very serious situations. Personally, I would want physicians to be involved in that process.

DH: I totally understand that. We also had to intervene in certain situations. We understand the gravity of it – especially with conditions like depression.

SM: I am very glad you are working on this problem. I actually wrote a series on my blog called Web 3.0 and Mental Illness. You might want to have a look at that. I think there are opportunities to do interesting things in the mental health area. It is good to see that you are experimenting and learning. I am sure you are going to take it further as you go along.

DH: Especially as we try to manage 50 different conditions and really pick and choose which of those communities we want to focus our efforts on. We have to do that at this point.

SM: You could have some level of moderation with professionals, for example.

DH: Mental health is not one of our strategic priorities at this point. We are really trying to work on the conditions like diabetes. That will be our primary focus for the next 6 – 12 months.

SM: But your mental health ones are the stickiest ones on the mobile.

DH: They are. But the audiences in mobile are still relatively small to what is happening on the desktop.

SM: I think what you are doing is very interesting. Thank you very much.

DH: It has been great talking to you.

This segment is part 7 in the series : Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Interview with Dan Hickey, SVP of Products at Alliance Health
1 2 3 4 5 6 7