ManyStrong Social Community SupportAs soon as he walked through the door at Starbucks, I knew something was terribly wrong. I have known Ben for more than ten years and he has never looked like this. Ben appeared extremely exhausted, had lost his smile and gained a few pounds since our last tea together.

After he dropped his keys on the small round table and sat down next to me, I asked Ben what was happening. His elderly mother had fallen again in her bathroom. Ben had been shlepping her from the hospital to her apartment, running to the pharmacy to change her medication for the third time this week and food shopping to make sure she had what she needed. As I listened to Ben, I wondered how his brother Rob or other family members were helping out. Just because Ben is the oldest child doesn’t mean that he needs to take on all of the responsibility. Caring for his mother day in and day out was taking a toll on my friend’s health.

When he stopped talking to take a breath, I started telling Ben about ManyStrong, the new social community initiative from UnitedHealth Group.  ManyStrong is a free new social tool that Ben can use to create an online community to support his mother, Evelyn.  When friends and family ask “how can help”, Ben can invite them to Evelyn’s private community which has tools for them to contribute in some way.

Over the past few years, I have worked with many different social communities but this one is different: 

Personalized Social Community On Demand: Ben can create a community for the specific purpose of supporting his mother.  Within the community, Ben can provide updates and request the help that he truly needs to care for his mother. Knowing Ben, it is easier for him to ask for help this way than it is to pick up the phone to call those who had offered help in the past.

Action Driven Support:  By following the link in Ben’s email invitation, friends and family can provide support in their own way. After all, some are a few miles away and others are across the country.

 - Financial Support: They can donate money which will be placed on a cash card or purchase a gift card for Evelyn.  

- Motivational Support: Her loved ones can leave care messaging to encourage Evelyn on a daily basis, motivating her to get stronger.  

- Story Telling For Support: Ben and others in Evelyn’s community can upload  pictures and videos to share. Seeing a photo of Evelyn walking after her fall may bring  relief to her loved ones. Ben can enter comments that “mom has her dancing shoes  ready” which may bring a smile to their faces, easing their anxiety for a moment.

- Physical Support: When Ben adds new requests for help within the ManyStrong  community, friends and family can take on the responsibility to make a meal, run an errand to the store, spend time with Evelyn or simply check- in on her. The  calendaring feature automatically tracks the need and the person taking on that need for all to see  in the community. 

ManyStrong Back Story

“We created ManyStrong simply to help people more easily help each other.  When people we know get sick, or go through a sudden medical emergency or other serious health event, we naturally want to help them.  They are our friends, our families, people we care about.  It’s tough to know how to help. And with everything that person is dealing with, it’s hard to find out what you can do to help without putting additional stress on them and their family.  That’s where ManyStrong comes in”, explains Kunjorn Chambundabongse (KC), VP Innovation and R&D, UnitedHealth Group.

When serious health issues arise, people turn to online communities for support. Many communities are designed for the individual with the health problem but not necessarily to support the caregiver.  In their February 2011 Peer- to -Peer Healthcare research, Pew found 59% turn to family, friends and fellow patients when needing “emotional support in dealing with a health issue”.

How is UnitedHealth providing a unique social community solution?  KC clarifies ManyStrong’s differentiation. “Yes there are many communities out there doing pieces of this.  Some sites focus on the medical and clinical related side, allowing people to connect with others going through similar illnesses and share treatment data.  Other sites focus on the non-clinical side, such as fundraising or keeping people informed through journaling/blogging.  And you have many people using the big sites like Facebook, but privacy and security are huge problems with something as serious as health.  ManyStrong brings all these tools into one place in a private and secure way, and allows the caregiver community manager to create a safe spot for people to rally together to support a person or family they care about.”

The ManyStrong social community solution can be used to support many different situations such as for a child with the long term illness, a senior aging at home or a co-worker battling a disease. Sometimes companies cannot envision the use cases before launching their offering into the marketplace.  KC has thought about the various situations and shares ”we don’t know exactly how people will use Many Strong but we make it our mission to learn from them. When we look at users or potential users of Many Strong, we ask if there is any way that we can make the product better for that family, that community, for the people they’re supporting based on how they’re using it.  One community could have hundreds or even thousands of supporters, or it could have a handful of very close supporters.”  

What does success look like? KC explains “success to us is about celebrating the actions of people helping one another.  Millions of messages of encouragement, millions in donations to families, and millions of hours of volunteered time… so many beautiful and meaningful actions.  Success to us is seeing all these actions across our country and across the world, one community at a time.”

During their initial beta phase, UnitedHealth is offering the entire community site for free and is even covering the transaction fee on the donated money.  KC describes their evolving business model for the ManyStrong Community. “Eventually we will need to charge small fees to cover bank transaction processing costs. We are also exploring integration with other service providers such as meal delivery, professional in-home care, and other features to provide even more options for people to give. We may earn referral fees from these merchant partners over time. While the site may earn some revenue, our mission is to give back profits to charitable organizations that will further benefit users of ManyStrong.”

Note: December 2013, UnitedHealth discontinued their ManyStrong website. 

Shape Up The Nation Comparative Data

According to Hewitt Associates’ survey with employers, A Road Ahead- Emerging Health Trends 2010, “changing employee behaviors related to health (e.g. encouraging employees to live healthier lifestyles and manage chronic conditions) will continue to be top of mind for employers over the next several years”.

Medium and large employers are evaluating different cost effective approaches that leverage technology to engage employees in their health. One approach that has generated results at the work place is social competition. Employees that participate in social competitions between co-workers and other companies gain the support and encouragement from their teammates to realize personal benefits such as getting more exercise, eating healthier and losing weight.

GTECH, a global technology company with over 3,000 employees in the U.S., piloted Shape Up The Nation’s platform back in 2007 in their headquarters office in Rhode Island.  They noticed their employees were actively participating in the program and decided to roll it out to all U.S. employees located in 24 states the following year.

“Our employees tell us that they like to have a structured program with the option of participating in any of the three options (e.g. weight, exercise and nutrition) with the team aspect”, explains Leo Perrone, Director, Employee Benefits at GTECH Corporation.

Through the technology, employees can track and monitor their progress. “What they really like is the comparative information because it motivates them to strive harder, serves as positive peer pressure and it helps the team captains to send out motivational messages”, emphasizes Perrone.

In fact the team captains are an essential piece of the social competition. GTECH recently had a meeting with their team captains to share best practices and make sure they have the tools that they need.  

Team captains regularly send out messages to encourage their teammates to try harder together and to congratulate them on their past efforts. Employees also send virtual ‘high fives’ and messages of support to their teammates.

Perrone discussed the employees’ response to the nutrition information that was tested in the platform this summer. “Our employee loved it. They entered in their meals and saw the calories, fat, protein, carbohydrates and sugar breakdown for the foods they are choosing. Our employees became more aware of what they are really eating on a daily basis”.   One of GTECH’s benefits for employees is the option to participate in six nutritional sessions each year. We agreed that the nutrition information from Shape Up  The Nation’s platform would be valuable to share with their nutrition educator for further insight.

GTECH plans to continue with this social competition approach. “This is a foundational program for us since it makes a difference in the personal health of our employees and it also helps with team building. Our employees get to know each other through these competitions and this helps our business” concludes Perrone.

More on employee engagement as the series continues...

Have you seen "Challenge Me" as an engagement driver?

During the Partners’ Center for Connected Health conference, BJ Fogg, Director Persuasive Technology Lab Stanford University created quite a stir when kicking off the event. I heard many attendees continue to discuss his behavior framework throughout the conference. BJ clearly delineates between consumer behaviors that are new (green), familiar (blue) and continuous (purple). He defines the time frame for changing these behaviors as one time, spanning a time period or becoming an ongoing path.

Where Are You Asking Consumers to Go?

BJ emphasized the need to “put hot triggers in the path of motivated people”. Eric Zimmerman, CMO of RedBrick Health echoed BJ’s approach suggesting that “we figure out what people want to do and link their action path to that”. Eric also mentioned that it is easier for consumers to be healthier with others. He cited their recent research revealing that those “working alone to reach health goals were half as effective as those working as part of a team”.  

During her keynote, Sheena Iyengar, Columbia Business School Professor and author of “The Art of Choosing” described the challenges that consumers have in selecting between their many options and how it becomes easier after gaining “expertise in the decision domain”.  Sheena pointed to the strategy of providing guidance including social communities to generate the wisdom of the crowd around how they made their decision.

How Are You Designing Their Journey?

Several speakers warned against designing the path for them and highly recommended going through the process with them. Noam Ziv, VP Technology at Qualcomm explained that people have different approaches to their health and need options. Through research, companies can define the set of approaches and identify the profile of people that will respond to each.

How about those who have stopped along their way? Madeline Pantalone, VP of Strategy and Business Development at GreatCall (Jitterbug) described how they proactively reached out to those who stopped using their service to better understand their needs and resolve problems.

Consumers are forced to slow down when they encounter a disjointed experience. When asked about his wish list to motivate engagement, Scott Eising, Director Advance Market Product Development at Mayo Clinic described the opportunity to “bring together products and services by role into a unified experience”. Imagine the experience that can be designed for a patient with a chronic condition who is also a caregiver for her elder parent and the family custodian for health.

Where Do You Go From Here?

The “Futurists” panel was very thought provoking. Ron Zeiger, Chief Health Strategist at Google focused in on two groups of consumers. One group, “Quantified Self” measures everything and asks questions. The second group is a heavy user of search where they look for answers.  

Eric Horvitz, Scientist at Microsoft Research explained that data collection is happening all around us, algorithms are being developed and interventions are being planned using “evidence based methods”.

I left the conference thinking about the situation described by the third panelist, Paul Maglio, Manager of Smarter Planet Service Systems at IBM Research. We are living longer and less healthy lives. “We need to do something beyond the data. Develop models and simulations for what may not have happened before and determine how that can play out in different scenarios.”

The future is emerging every day which makes the healthcare industry terribly exciting. I work with companies to understand their consumers’ evolving needs and conceptualize products that touch new channels, deliver new content and enable new capabilities for collaboration and community.

Together, we can define the purple path for consumer eHealth engagement.

Alliance for a Healthier Minnesota launched an online health and wellness competition with teams from large local employers including General Mills, Target, BCBS Minnesota and UnitedHealth Group.  Employees are battling in three contests; to lose weight, be more active and eat healthier. Weight loss is center stage. In four weeks since the Challenge started, 10,000 employees have lost over 20,000 pounds.

Powering the Challenge

RedBrick Health’s Platform enables companies and their employees to engage in this competition through social networking, messaging, tracking and monitoring capabilities. As a first step, employees use their online tools to build their teams. Each employee contributes to his team by earning points for losing weight, engaging in physical activity (minutes) and following nutritional guidelines. Most employees recorded their results online. Although they can also enter their weight through their mobile phone. Employees closely watch the “leader board” on CompeteforHealth.org to monitor their progress.

As the Challenge heats up, employees turn their attention to their own physical activity and dietary decisions and post messages for their social network of team and company participants. In fact, there are thousands of posts already shared between teammates. The types of messages fall into seven different categories: 

 1. Goal Setting - I plan to lose three pounds to get to my ideal BMI. I will not eat desserts at the wedding this weekend. I am going to exercise five times a week.

2.  Motivating - You can do it! Our Team is going to rock!

3.  Praising - Congratulations on finishing the 5K! I knew you could make it the entire conference without eating a cookie! Thanks for bringing us all a healthy lunch!

4.  Reminding - Don't forget to track your weight! Remember to join our team at the walking path this afternoon. Sign up for our Team by Monday!

5.  Inviting - Who wants to join a softball team? Anyone want to sign-up for the half-marathon? Who wants to join me in losing five pounds over the next month?

6.  Sharing (with links provided)- Have you seen these core exercises? Take a look at this marathon website. Try this new low fat dessert recipe.

7.  Slipping-up - I fell off the wagon this weekend and ate poorly... I'll turn it around this week. I skipped exercising the past few days...I plan to restart tomorrow...sorry team.

There are several themes running through these team messages of camaraderie,  accountability and support.

Extra Push from Multi-Company Challenges

“Although companies find different motivations for their specific populations, we do believe the multi-company competition is generating even greater engagement than a single company competition”, explains Eric Zimmerman, Chief Marketing Officer at RedBrick Health. “The differentiator is the additional leadership push we’re seeing in the multi-company competition. There’s a great deal of company pride at stake, especially when you have a public leader board posting your organization's progress versus your peers.”

Hear more about these social competitions taking place across and within employer organizations from Eric Zimmerman at the Healthcare Unbound Conference on my panel New Models for Leveraging Social Media for Consumer Engagement.