21 Feb Rally Health Gamifies Digital Platform To Support and Engage Consumers
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Brian Dolan
Chief Strategy and Partner Integration Officer
Rally Health
MedicalResearch.com Editor’s note: On February 3, 2015, Rally Health launched a New HIPPA compliant Digital Engagement platform that gives consumers the support and tools they need to better manage their health and well-being. Brian Dolan, the Chief Strategy and Partner Integration Officer at Rally Health, was kind enough to answer questions regarding the new health care interface for the readers of MedicalResearch.com.
MedicalResearch: What is the background or vision for the Rally Health digital engagement platform?
Mr. Dolan: We designed the platform to give consumers the support and tools they need to better manage their health and well-being. Rally leverages the power of personal health data, social networking, and gamification to encourage consumers to take control of their health. Rally’s proven behavior-changing technology encourages consumers to manage their own health by inspiring sustained action and offering intrinsic and extrinsic value-based incentives for engagement. Members can also meet other Rally users for ongoing support and encouragement. With the right balance of social and digital connectivity, Rally Health creates a modern consumer experience that makes getting healthy personal, relevant and fun.
Mr. Dolan: Can you tell us a little about the primary founders?
Mr. Dolan: Grant Verstandig, the Founder and CEO of Rally Health, is a visionary health care entrepreneur focused on developing technology-based solutions that touch every point of a consumer’s health care experience based on the premise that a more educated, empowered and informed patient yields more cost effective and higher quality care. Grant has been included in the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for science and healthcare (2012) and the Bisnow 40 Under 30 Awards (2013), among others.
MedicalResearch: What are the benefits for the patient and health care provider of using the Rally Health application?
Mr. Dolan: The benefits of Rally for the patient/person begin with a simple and fun Health Survey which helps us understand each individuals health interests, concerns and preferences. Rally’s approach is to support the individual’s care and daily behavioral (activity, nutrition and emotional) needs in order to make it easier to live a healthy lifestyle every day. Based on an individual’s clinical and behavioral profile, Rally provides multiple layers of engagement through personalized recommendations, rewards, coaching, tools, community, and content that promote healthy lifestyle behaviors. The HIPAA-compliant platform also has the ability to allow individuals to share their information with their care team. Empowering individuals with this ability enables patient/provider communications to evolve from periodic episodic interactions to an ongoing monitoring and support system. Armed with more information about their patients, providers are better able to support their ongoing health needs.
MedicalResearch: How do you see the platform interfacing with the patient’s EMR or electronic medical record?
Mr. Dolan: Our goal is to make it simple for individuals to interact with the health care system and to also live a healthy lifestyle. An important component of that process is to provide their care team with more complete and up to date information including behavioral data which is typically not part of a patient’s record. To date, we have partnered with health plans and created integrated data profiles by combining medical, laboratory and prescription drug data with self-reported individual behavioral data. We are presently exploring provider system partnership opportunities which would enable us to create a similar type of multi-dimensional dataset including EMR data. Ultimately our goal is to allow consumers to control digital access and distribution of their complete health data profile to all the key stakeholders supporting their health needs.
MedicalResearch: What future goals do you have for Rally Health?
Mr. Dolan: Wellness is only a starting point when it comes to the potential impact of digital health. Our vision for Rally Health is to create a digital suite of tools that actively engages consumers throughout their daily health and care experiences — whether it’s chatting with a coach online, completing a mobile health assessment, searching for the right provider or making an informed financial care decision. We want to bring a true consumer focused experience to daily health to make it easier and rewarding for every individual to pursue a healthy lifestyle.
In 2015, Rally Health will continue to develop more solutions to create a unified health experience that addresses the entire health continuum. The company will also expand its partnerships and offerings both within the U.S. and internationally.
More about Brian Dolan:
Brian Dolan, Chief Strategy and Partner Integration Officer at Rally Health, is a seasoned healthcare innovator with more than 25 years of healthcare and consulting experience. Over the course of his career he has gained a comprehensive and balanced understanding of the challenges and opportunities present within today’s healthcare system from the perspective of all the primary stakeholders (consumers, providers, employers and insurers).
Prior to Rally Health, Brian was Chief Customer Solutions Officer for ActiveHealth Management, where he was a driver of innovative consumer health engagement and transparent measurement strategies. Earlier in his career Brian was Senior Vice President of Business Development for Uniprise, a UnitedHealth Group business providing benefit delivery and service solutions for large employers. Before Uniprise, Brian held continuous leadership roles at Towers Perrin where he was Northeast Sales and Marketing Leader, Principal and Stamford Practice Leader. Previously he had also been a manager within Hewitt Associates group benefits practice in Connecticut. Earlier in his career, Brian had responsibility for provider risk contracting and underwriting with Tufts Health Plan and Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. Brian earned an MBA from Clark University and a B.A. from Bowdoin College.
Rally Health Press Release:
Rallying Around Consumers: Rally Health Launches New Digital Engagement Solution
More than 5 million people now have access to the Rally platform to better manage their health
SAN FRANCISCO AND WASHINGTON, D.C., February 3, 2015 — Rally Health, Inc., a leading developer of data-driven solutions for consumer health engagement, today announced the launch of its flagship product, RallySM. The HIPAA-compliant platform leverages the power of personal health data, social networking, and gamification to encourage consumers to take control of their health.
Rally is a digital health platform that gives consumers the support and tools they need to better manage their health and well-being. The gateway to Rally is the Health Survey, which uses industry standards, research, and best practices to give consumers a measure of their overall health. Rally’s clinical and user experience teams designed the survey to cover all areas of health and engage consumers in a fun and compelling way, resulting in a 90 percent completion rate.
Based on the consumer’s self-reported and digitally captured data, Rally provides multiple layers of engagement through personalized recommendations, rewards, coaching, tools, community, and content that promote healthy lifestyle behaviors. As a result of Rally’s intuitive interface and personalization capabilities, its engagement rate is 10 times the industry standard.
“We believe the key to changing behavior lies in personalization. We are focused on delivering the right tools, the right experience, and the right information at the right time to our end users,” says Grant Verstandig, Rally Health’s founder and chief executive officer. “Our intuitive and easy-to-use interface offers an engaging user experience that will help manage risk, reduce health care costs, and reward users living a healthy lifestyle.”
Rally Health’s Aggressive Growth and Expanding Customer Base
Rally Health is led by seasoned health care experts, award-winning game and user experience designers, and software developers. It partners with the industry’s leading employers and payers who recognize the need and demand for digital health solutions to improve the health and well-being of their employees and members.
Today, the company is a primary provider of digital wellness solutions for UnitedHealth Group and continues to expand its consumer base through relationships with institutions like Health Alliance Medical Plans and highly visible employer groups, providing platform access to millions of members. Currently, more than 5 million people have access to Rally.
“Wellness is only a starting point when it comes to the potential impact of digital health,” said David Ko, president and chief operating officer of Rally Health, formerly of Yahoo! and Zynga. “Our vision for Rally Health is to create a digital suite of tools that actively engages consumers throughout their entire health care experience — whether it’s chatting with a coach online at work or taking a mobile health assessment while sitting at the doctor’s office. Rally meets the consumer where they are.”
In 2015, Rally Health will continue to develop more solutions to create a unified health experience that addresses the entire health continuum. The company will also expand its partnerships and offerings both within the U.S. and internationally.
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Brian Dolan, Chief Strategy and Partner Integration Officer, & Rally Health (2015). Rally Health Gamifies Digital Platform To Support and Engage Consumers
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Last Updated on February 21, 2015 by Marie Benz MD FAAD