Thought Leaders in Healthcare IT: Kristen Valdes, CEO of b.well Connected Health (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What are the top actions they take?

Kristen Valdes: It’s all over the board. We look at this as a digital persona. Healthcare has historically targeted individuals and looked at risk based on things like the zip code, age, presence of chronic condition. When we think about a digital-first experience, there’s a whole new set of profiling that needs to be done for individuals. I may be a caregiver first. That means that you need to prompt me with, “What is my healthcare need?” before you start to target things that I need.

There’s another persona of folks who are gamers. They respond to gamification and loyalty programs. They will proactively come in more and seek out educational information. We also have people who are worried. They want to collect information as much as they can. The best way to target them is to show them new data on their health. When we think about what drives consumers in, it’s different depending on what motivates somebody from a health perspective. That’s why the experience layer has to be personalized to them.

Sramana Mitra: Very good point. You’re catering to the consumers’ needs, but there’s ROI that your customers are receiving. Could you speak on that?

Kristen Valdes: Again, no two customers are exactly the same. From the employer side of things, we may have an employer who’s in the trucking and logistics space. One of their biggest challenges in their population are things like musculoskeletal issues and injury. We may have another employer where their biggest cost is complicated pregnancies and maternity.

When we think about the needs of those populations, we have to tailor the programs to specifically what the employers need. On the health system side, you may have folks that are in highly competitive areas who are trying to be the easiest providers and systems to access. They’re focused on use cases like, “Hold my place in line at urgent care so I don’t have to come in and sit around a large number of sick people.”

It could be, “Help me find an appointment from a mobile perspective with the right kind of doctor. If they’re not available for six to seven weeks, show me the next available provider who matches my need.” You might have other health systems that are moving into the value-based contracting where they’re at risk for saying, “I need my whole population that I’m at risk for to be depression-screened.” These are solutions and KPI’s where we can drive choice.

Let’s take colorectal cancer screening. It’s a difficult measure for both insurance companies and providers. People don’t generally want to come in for a colonoscopy. It’s not something we look forward to. It’s giving someone a choice and delivering educational information at fourth-grade reading levels in a digital format and helping people understand.

We’re creating use cases that give consumers choice and convenience while trying to raise the measure itself without doctors and nurses having to pick up the phone. As you know, they’re quite busy, especially in this age of the global pandemic. Helping to keep people healthy without having to have a human pick up the phone are ROI’s and KPI’s that drive our customers.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Thought Leaders in Healthcare IT: Kristen Valdes, CEO of b.well Connected Health
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