Jay Sheehy Discusses Technology's Role in Consumer Engagement

Technology has come to play an important role in the way health plans are interacting with consumers. According to Jay Sheehy, senior vice president of product innovation at EmblemHealth, technology not only gives health plans a customized means of communicating with consumers, but it also allows them to better analyze data to tailor messages to each individual.

Transcript (slightly modified)

How has technology evolved the consumer experience and how consumers are engaging with consumers?

Well, technology really comes at it from multiple perspectives and the way I think about it is, technology allows you to really customize how you communicate with individual consumers. You can tailor some of the interactions to more of how people like to receive messages. Some people still like to receive things in the mail, a lot of us like to receive things through email. There are a lot of studies that show communications through email have a higher pick-up rate, a higher engagement rate, and others now particularly as you look at different segments of the population like the millennials, they really like getting things on their smart phones. How do you make it easier for them?

We need to look at it rather than from the healthcare company or from the industry as to really from the consumer end and how do we engage them and get them the messaging, keep it simple and technology really allows you to do that.

The other piece that technology provides is the ability to get a lot of very good data to really focus the message and focus the information down. Using Amazon as an example again, Amazon has hundreds or thousands of different options and suppliers but if you go on and say you’re looking for a beach chair and you provide them with some simple information, they are able to put 3 or 4 really good options in front of you. And then they also tell you, if you’re going to buy this beach chair, wouldn’t you like this beach umbrella as well. They’re able to leverage the data to make it more valuable for you, the consumer, and that’s when people really get far more engaged and understand as well as really try to get far more accountable for their own healthcare.

And that’s what we’re really trying to move. It is more complicated in healthcare but that really focusing around the actual consumer and really trying to do things that make it more of value to them is the end goal.