Denver-based WellTok is putting a twist on the healthcare industry by giving their attention to factors that drive users to live a healthy life, instead of focusing on healthcare options. Their lessons learned? That users are easily turned on by incentives, and that people are willing to change their life for something in return, WellTok COO Jason Keller said.
According to Keller one of WellTok’s purposes is to benefit people who live a healthy lifestyle, and prevent people from living an unhealthy one. They do this by providing incentives to their users through their CaféWell platform, which is driven by applications, devices and programs that allow for users to stay connected to co-workers, family, and friends to share their healthy successes.
CafeWell, which is powered by IBM’s Watson “supercomputer,” keeps its users motivated by creating social connections with friends or coworkers and consists of four main aspects: personal, reward, social, and ease.
WellTok’s approach has been paying off lately: they are contracted to reach up to 20 million members nationally and they just acquired incentive-driven healthcare company IncentOne last month.
By plugging in IncentOne’s vast information on incentives, a subject their New Jersey-based team has been studying for the past eight years, to the CafeWell platform, WellTok is poising itself to solve major problems in the healthcare industry, such as consumers not understanding their own benefits.
“By combining proprietary incentive management methodology and reward platform with WellTok’s social health management capabilities, we can provide an integrated enterprise solution that allows organizations to drive meaningful action on an individual level,” Michael Dermer, founder and CEO of IncentOne, said.
Because CaféWell influences both users who are already healthy and those who aren’t, Keller said he hopes the platform will enable everyone to make better choices (like exercising and going to the doctor) so that they can be rewarded not just by CafeWell, but also by their own improved health!
