Ep. 23: Allison Gage, MBA, Chief Engagement Officer, mPulse Mobile. Topic: Patient Engagement and Technology
Kathy: Welcome to Episode 23 of the Smarter Healthcare Podcast. Our guest is Allison Gage, Chief Engagement Officer at mPulse Mobile. Allison is here to talk to us about patient engagement and how technology can play a larger role in improving relationships between healthcare organizations and their patients or customers.
Here's our conversation!
Kathy: Hi Allison, thank you for joining us on the podcast today. Could you start by telling us about your background and how you came to your current role at mPulse Mobile?
Allison: Yes, thank you Kathy for inviting me. So happy to be here. My background is in startups, actually, so I’ll kind of talk a little bit about how I wound up at mPulse through this journey. But I’ve always been an entrepreneur, I’ve always just been very passionate about being in a small company and helping to grow something. I started my career in venture capital, on the entrepreneurial side, as an investor first. And what I learned through that experience – it was also a sign of the times too, that when I was in venture capital we were going through a really difficult time in the market. It was right after 9/11, the internet boom and bust – what we used to call the internet industry. So a lot of stocks didn’t do well. So we had companies in our portfolio that were not in great shape. So I spent a lot of my time helping these companies right-size their business model, look at different opportunities to cut cost, and get to profitability faster, and what I learned through that experience was I really enjoyed being in the thick of it. Not just being an investor, but being a part of the building and growing process. And so I’ve spent the last 20 years on the operating side. This is actually my third start-up, what we would call ground-up start-up, so starting from nothing, and then taking it all the way through to an acquisition. My very first one was in the healthcare space, we were a very early player in telehealth, so we focused on the senior market, so what we called aging services. And it was a technology that helped caregivers understand activities of daily living and through a smart sensor system know when there are changes in a person’s behavior and that’s an early indicator of a potential problem. So that company was acquired by GE Healthcare. My second company was in the online learning space, called Sophia Learning. Sophia Learning was, and still is, an online supplemental tool for middle school, high school teachers and students, and it provided a pathway to college, better access to college through different learning opportunities. And now with The Big Know and mPulse, I feel like I’ve kind of closed the loop. The Big Know and mPulse is a health engagement company focused on – one of our products that we have is The Big Know, which is the learning aspect of this, and so I kind of feel like we’re in learning, online learning, plus healthcare, so it’s kind of full circle. So that’s how I ended up in the healthcare space again. We were acquired by mPulse at the beginning of this year, and so now I’m the Chief Engagement Officer for mPulse Mobile.
Kathy: Great. So how does The Big Know, how does the technology that you have through that company combine with or complement mPulse’s?
Allison: Well, that’s what made our acquisition by mPulse so exciting was the complementarity of not only the technology but the mission and the vision. Our shared mission and vision is re-imagining health engagement. When we say re-imagining health engagement, it really is taking a look outside of healthcare. Health engagement is not a very – it’s not a great experience right now across the industry. So as we think about what re-imagining health engagement is, it really is about treating consumers as they are consumers first. So they’re not members first, they’re not patients first, they’re really consumers. So our north star is what people, what consumers expect from the world’s biggest brands, they should be expecting from healthcare, and that’s what we want to deliver. So we take inspiration from all the big consumer brands. From Amazon and Target to new healthcare companies like - and applications like Noom, new platforms like a Peloton, also what people are doing online, streaming video is one. So all of that allows us to kind of think about health engagement differently. So we take the tools that are available to us on our technology platform and use that in a way to move people from feeling like it’s a transactional relationship that they have with their provider or with their health plan, to one that’s based on a relationship. And that’s how consumers think about big brands today, the ones that they really interact with. They feel like they have a relationship with that brand. So that’s what we want our healthcare clients to be able to present and represent to their consumers.
Kathy: Now when you’re talking about that relationship, I think one criticism of technology has been that it takes away from some of that humanness of healthcare that we get through those personal face-to-face interactions. What are your thoughts on that?
Allison: It’s such a great question. I think the big assumption in healthcare is face-to-face is better, or synchronicity is better. So we don’t do a lot of face-to-face right now. There’s a lot of Zoom, there’s a lot of phone calls, et cetera, but I would say if you survey consumers and their experience in a clinic or on the phone with their healthcare provider, I wouldn’t actually say they feel very human. The experience does not feel like they actually know us. So humanness is about community and feeling like we’re connected, like we’re understood, and in many ways technology enables more of that. So technology used in the right way, designed with a human-centered design focus, it’s really about removing the friction in our interactions, and allowing us to be seen and heard and that’s where that humanness comes from, it’s feeling like you have a connection and that relationship with that provider or that plan. So that’s a lot of what we do with technology is think about ways that we can use the data and our activation intelligence, all of the tools that we have available to us through streaming education, understanding where you are in your life and personalizing the experience so that you – our consumers feel like they’re being heard.
Kathy: I like what you said there about technology removing the friction in healthcare. Now I know that it’s been harder to engage some types of patients such as those from some minority groups, socioeconomic groups or age groups. What are some of the challenges with patient engagement in those populations and how are you addressing that?
Allison: Yeah, that’s such a great question, such a big question as well. These populations have obviously very significant barriers and challenges. What we call social determinants of health challenges. And these challenges take a society to help solve. It’s more than just a provider or a plan or a company like mPulse. But where we can play, where mPulse can really make a difference, is in using our tailored and personalized conversational capabilities to unearth those specific barriers and challenges, and where appropriate use behavioral science principles and techniques to encourage people to take the next best step. Now oftentimes one of those key barriers in this population is a lack of health education or what we call low health literacy. In that case the behavioral science techniques work in combination with our learning science to help close knowledge and skill gaps, and that’s actually why we created The Big Know in the first place. We believe education in and of itself cannot drive behavior change, but conversely, you can’t have behavior change without education. So that’s such a critical component of addressing the challenges in this population. Another aspect to the education gap for this population is that – the gaps are in a lot more than just the area of their physical health. So, they may be dealing with low literacy around their financial well-being. So, they may be having other issues with their family or their community. So, there’s so many different areas that affect your physical health, and that’s why having a well-being framework is so important. Well-being is the notion that your physical health is connected with all the other elements of your life. There’s a lot of science, for example, behind the correlation between financial health and your physical health, your emotional health, mental health obviously affects how you can take care of yourself and your family. So our framework of health literacy takes a well-being approach. So we just don’t teach people about things around their physical health, it’s how to manage your stress better, how to sleep better, how to have purpose in life, how to manage your personal budget. So meeting people where they are is a huge area of opportunity to address some of these issues in this population so that it makes the topic of physical health a little more accessible. So another challenge that we commonly see in this population is lack of transportation or transportation barriers. So in that case, this is a great example of how tailored conversations are so important. And these tailored conversations are all automated, but they are designed in a way, with our natural language understanding, to be able to unearth barriers, and if transportation, which is a very common barrier, comes up as an issue, that’s a really insightful piece of information to have on that person. How else would we know that that was a barrier for this person? It’s not typically on our medical records, right? And so, if we know that then that next dialogue that we have with that person can be very pointed in addressing that particular barrier. We can, for example, provide resources that are available through our clients and help address transportation issues. So those are some of the ways that we are trying to be a part of the village that is necessary to solve these challenges.
Kathy: I’m a healthcare consumer. Can you walk me through how I would engage with your platform? Who do you work with as your clients, and what would I see as the consumer?
Allison: Yeah, so we work with a large ecosystem of healthcare companies. So from providers, health plans, to pharmacies, as well as, even dental clinics. But in your particular question I think I’ll use the example of a health plan. And how you as a consumer would use mPulse Mobile is through the health plan we would get information about you, and we’re usually brought on to help solve a particular challenge, or series of challenges. It could be closing gaps in care, medication refills, in the very beginning it could be member onboarding and navigation. So we would communicate with you in your preferred channel, either e-mail, SMS, IVR even, and we start a dialogue with you so that we can better understand where you are, and then personalize that conversation as we’re moving you through all those different areas that we are engaging with you on. And all of that is in the service of outcomes. So we want to help our clients, in this particular case a health plan, help our clients get people to the wellness checks that they’re supposed to do, the screenings that they’re supposed to do, refill the medications that are really critical to maintaining their condition…but that is hard. Because we get so many messages, we are inundated with e-mails and text messages all the time. So personalizing that communication, and making you feel like you’re being talked to as Kathy, and it’s contextualized to your needs, and your barriers is a really important element to how we actually achieve those outcomes. That combined with our behavior science techniques that move you through that journey to increase the likelihood that you’ll actually do the thing that is going to be the best for you in terms of health outcome. And then we layer that in with The Big Know content. So we, if in that conversation you say something like, “Well I don’t understand why I would need to get a colonoscopy. I thought I had to be 50 and I’m only 45.” Well the latest recommendation is to get a colonoscopy or a colorectal cancer screening at 45 so we would then deliver a very specific health education piece that’s focused on why you should do this.
Kathy: Great. Now we hear a lot about the promise of AI in healthcare, but it also has lots of challenges. Do you think the healthcare system is ready to fully leverage the capabilities of AI and where do you think that market is headed?
Allison: Yeah, God, I wish so. I would say not fully capable, but there’s always hope. I saw on the news this morning that Delta is getting ready to roll out this new face recognition technology that will streamline and make it so much more efficient and less time-consuming to get yourself checked in, and get on the plane. Everything is automated, so it’s face recognition, biometrics, they have all your information in this, so you can go there, instead of going to a ticket counter, they recognize who you are, you don’t need to show your ID or anything, you can print out your boarding pass, get the luggage tags if you need to, and then go straight through security. Same thing when you’re at the gate – you don’t need to show your boarding pass to the ticket agent, they already know you. You put your face in there, ‘Oh we know exactly where you’re going.’ And so all of this is enabled because they have information about you. They have your name, your biometrics, they’ve got your passport, your driver’s license information, and if you are TSA Pre, they have that information. And so that is, in the healthcare world, PHI, it’s personally identifiable information. It’s OK to use it in that way, but it’s so much harder to do that in healthcare. So that’s I think one of the challenges of AI is being able to fully access all of the information that’s available through all the different ways that we engage with healthcare so that we can make it a frictionless experience and a more personalized experience in the way that we see it happening in air transportation. So that’s a long way of saying, I hope so, I hope soon, some of the challenges are regulatory, et cetera. But I do think whatever we do around AI, the goal is always around three things – improving outcomes, enabling a better experience, and reducing costs. So we have to have a lot of conversations with consumers and with our health organizations, to be able to thoughtfully put together ways that we can take advantage of the data that we have available to us to enable those three outcomes.
Kathy: Are there certain use cases that you think are better for AI right now?
Allison: Well, I think the more basic use cases would be better for AI. For example, a doctor’s office. Why couldn’t you replicate that Delta check-in experience in your clinic? They already have all that information, they don’t have to share it with a lot of outside parties. So I think having a very specific confined way to start and make people comfortable with sharing information and doing it that way can go a long way to hopefully allowing the rest of the ecosystem figure out the pipes that can connect all of the different data so that we can continue to automate and use that data to help the companies that are serving consumers be smarter every time they interact with you. And that’s really truly the definition of AI, right? It’s learning. With every single interaction that you have we’re learning something more to make the next experience better.
Kathy: Now in looking towards the future, what areas of healthcare do you think will see the greatest impact from technology investments?
Allison: I am so excited about virtual care. Like I said my very first start-up that was acquired by GE Healthcare was technically in the telehealth space. So these were motion sensors that were put in people’s homes. And they were smart sensors that learned people’s activities of daily living, what were normal, and any time they deviate from outside the norm it would send an alert to a caregiver, and back then it was considered so novel. Because you’re….in telehealth – who’s going to pay for it. It’s not reimbursable by the government. How do we get people to pay for this and to trust technology working in their home rather than having a person there checking on a mom or dad or grandma. So now, post- I can’t say post-pandemic because we still are in it, but the last 18 months or so, through the pandemic we’ve all become very comfortable with virtual care. So, all of those notions of – it’s not as effective, people won’t like it as much – that’s all completely gone. We’ve already blown through those beliefs. People do actually enjoy virtual care, and some, probably many, prefer to do it that way. So I’m really excited about the future of virtual care, and I think once it starts to become even more available today, a lot of providers are going more and more in that direction, a lot of the bigger companies are going more and more in that direction, so as there are more opportunities for virtual care to grow, not just in primary care or urgent care but dermatology, mental health, et cetera, it’s going to create a whole new world of possibilities for disruption. From innovative new devices, to how we share information, to new types of companies that will make the model more seamless and easy and less clunky, and then you have companies jumping into this space. Consumer companies like Wal-Mart and Amazon Care. So all of that is just going to be this really big soup of stuff that I think over the next two or three years will create some really, really great recipes for the consumer.
Kathy: Well Allison, this was such a great discussion. Thank you so much for joining us.
Allison: Well thank you so much. This was fun. Thank you.
Kathy: Thank you for joining me for this episode of the Smarter Healthcare Podcast.
If you’d like to learn more about Allison and mPulse Mobile, you can follow the company on Twitter @mPulseMobile.
You can follow me on Twitter @ksucich or @smarthcpodcast. Feel free to get in touch with comments or guest suggestions.
To listen to more episodes, visit our website at www.smarthcpodcast.com or find us on your favorite podcast app. I’d appreciate if you would subscribe, rate, and review.
Thanks for listening!
