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mPulse Mobile Celebrates Innovation and Health Outcomes with Second Annual Activate Awards

Magellan Rx Management, Kaiser Permanente, Byram Healthcare and others receive awards recognizing their innovation and results in improving health consumer activation.

LOS ANGELES, CA – November 20, 2019

mPulse Mobile announces winners of the Activate Awards each fall during its annual Activate conference. The Activate Awards recognize customers and partners that have driven impressive, measurable results like improved consumer health outcomes through consumer activation and lowering overall healthcare costs.

Winners of the Activate Awards are on the forefront of healthcare consumer engagement, leveraging Conversational AI and mobile messaging solutions to better engage with their consumers and activate them in their health. Award submissions were evaluated on both qualitative and quantitative results, including innovation, consumer engagement, health outcomes, process improvement, and cost reduction.

2019 Activate Award winners include:

Most Innovative Solution – Magellan Rx Management

Magellan Rx is a next-generation full-service pharmacy benefit manager that has over 40 years of expertise helping customers and members solve complex pharmacy challenges. Recognizing unused opioid medication kept by patients in their households can be diverted to inappropriate use, Magellan launched an Opioid Disposal texting program. The solution connects a digital pain management program to a physical pouch-disposal program. The conversational messaging program provides members with pain management strategies to improve self-efficacy levels and educates patients about the risks of keeping unused opioids in their homes. The program offers disposal pouches and provides reminders and tips to support patients as they use the pouches to dispose of unused opioids in an environmentally friendly manner.

“Magellan is focused on solving some of healthcare’s biggest challenges, and we know leveraging innovative technology is a big key to success in this mission” said Sagar Makanji, Magellan Rx Management’s Vice President of Clinical Strategy and Programs. “Collaborating with mPulse enables us to build-out innovative and impactful clinical programs that focus on the individual, which is the most effective way of driving improved health outcomes.”

Best Use of Conversational AI – Kaiser Permanente

Kaiser Permanente is one of the nation’s largest not for profit health plans, serving 12.3 million members. Kaiser Permanente’s Pharmacy department operates a conversational, text-based Refill Reminder solution to provide an efficient way for members to refill certain chronic medications. 273,356 Refill conversations were sent to 99,217 Medicare Part D patients over 2 years. Overall there was a 35% response rate and of the 307,484 responses only 7.8% were not understood by the Conversational AI (CAI) used in the program. CAI is used effectively to identify and classify barriers that individual patients bring up and connects them to appropriate pharmacy and plan resources. Overall the solution has achieved a 17.4% refill request rate amongst non-adherent members.

Most Significant Outcome – Byram Healthcare

Byram Healthcare is a leading provider of home use medical supplies focused on improved health outcomes and affordability of care for people managing their chronic conditions. Byram wanted to improve the efficiency of its health supply reorder solution by enabling patients to review and reorder their supplies directly in the text channel. Within 12 months of launching the program, 42,218 patients reordered their supplies through interactive text messaging. This represents over 50% of all orders for certain key product areas. With the cost of the program taken into account and the overall gross margin, the successful launch of this program yielded tremendous results, beating all ROI targets for Byram Healthcare.

“Byram is focused on providing the best possible consumer experience. Our partnership with mPulse helps us provide an amazing experience by making it much more convenient for consumers to manage the healthcare products they need, while also creating significant efficiencies for our organization. It’s a win-win,” said Nick Piecora, Chief Information Officer at Byram Healthcare.

Most Improved Consumer Experience – Midwest Medicaid Managed Care Health Plan

The plan was recognized for its Redetermination Solution, which incorporates mobile engagement in coordination with Redetermination Events. Continuity in coverage is key to maintaining continuous access to care, which is particularly important for those with complex medical needs. Limited access to transportation, childcare, and the internet as well as poor literacy skills can keep members from completing the redetermination process in a timely way. Members are engaged about the Redetermination Events though mobile messaging, which drove a significant increase in event attendance.

“It is so exciting to see companies embrace innovative solutions for consumer health activation,” said Chris Nicholson, Co-Founder and CEO of mPulse Mobile. “AI is impacting healthcare at a rapid pace, and Conversational AI is at the forefront. We see companies that leverage intelligent solutions consistently establish deep, meaningful relationships with their consumers, which is the foundation for improving outcomes. We are thrilled to be part of this mission.”

New Blog Series, People of mPulse Mobile: Brendan McClure

We believe the most valuable aspect of our various healthcare technology solutions is our people. As part of the “People of mPulse Mobile” blog series, we are proud to feature a selection of our many mPulse Mobile team members that bring different experiences, a broad set of skills and the same deep dedication every day to help our clients drive desired outcomes for both their organizations and healthcare consumers.

This week’s featured team member is Brendan McClure, Director of Solutions Marketing. Brendan joined mPulse in January 2016 because he felt driven to work for a start-up healthcare company focused on mobile healthcare engagement, as he saw mobile healthcare as a huge growth area. So far, he is right.

Having spent his entire career in healthcare, Brendan understands the unique challenges that need to be solved for diverse healthcare organizations. In his role, Brendan is in charge of setting the strategy for how mPulse addresses different healthcare verticals and demonstrates effectiveness within the marketplace. Brendan also focuses on competitive intelligence and sales training to help our team demonstrate that mPulse is the leader in mobile health engagement by highlighting key differentiators that matter to our customers.

With such a wide array of customers and use cases, Brendan and his team are excited about their constant research and learning about healthcare markets, “Healthcare and all the areas of healthcare that we touch are such huge, complex areas of industry that we are always going to grow and become more sophisticated.”

Brendan’s proudest accomplishment since joining the team isn’t something he has personally accomplished, but rather the growth and evolution of mPulse Mobile as a company.

You can frequently find Brendan at one of the many events mPulse Mobile sponsors each year. Check out our events calendar.

mPulse Mobile Holds Its Third Annual Activate Conference

mPulse Mobile wrapped up its third annual Activate conference last month. Activate2019 was another resounding success at the Marina Del Rey Hotel on October 9th and 10th with over 100 leaders from across the healthcare engagement landscape.

mPulse’s CEO and Co-Founder Chris Nicholson kicked things off with his outlook on how the conversation about healthcare consumer engagement has changed dramatically in just the last few years. The role of Conversational AI in adding capacity and improving access to care took center stage early on, with an insightful keynote address by Kaveh Safavi MD, JD – Senior Managing Director and Head of Global Health Practice at Accenture – that focused on how AI can change the future of healthcare. His talk focused on the practical and actionable ways that automation and scale can (and must) be applied to healthcare to confront some of the major challenges of the present and future.

Attendees then heard from the first of three panels of mPulse Mobile clients driving improved outcomes through innovative mobile solutions. Susan Arcidiacono, Chief Marketing Officer at Inland Empire Health Plan discussed how text message programs extended and enhanced her team’s efforts to close gaps in care, improve member experience, and promote preventative service utilization for a large Medicaid population. Sagar Makanji, the VP of Clinical Programs at Magellan Rx Management, then outlined how the PBM has transformed member engagement to help client plans improve Medicare Part D Star Ratings.

The next panel featured three clinical leaders from Kaiser Permanente – Winston Lai, Innovation Lead, Amy Chateau, Manager of Ambulatory Care, and Kristi Tague, Support Services Supervisor. They discussed how tailored and Conversational AI-enabled messages drove improved screening completion rates for key populations. The team shared specific workflows and best practices they used to improve colorectal cancer screening and pulmonary function test completions in San Diego.

After a lunch on the Marina and a roadmap update from our CTO Ram Prayaga, attendees took part in interactive workshops to develop new applications for Conversational AI in healthcare and engaging with the data that these solutions generate. The final customer panel of the day featured Donna Stanislawski, Director, Quality and Population Outcome at IlliniCare Health, Jacqueline Thong, Senior Director of Product Performance at Docent Health, Erwin Jeong, Pharmacy Clinical Operations Manager at Kaiser Permanente, and Rachel Fournier, Director, Product Management OnTrak Digital at Catasys. The group heard from Donna how IlliniCare manages a wide range of key engagement initiatives with a difficult-to-reach population. Jacqueline explained how Docent Health has embraced the text channel and mPulse’s Engagement Console to provide impactful support to patients during the care journey. Erwin detailed how Kaiser Permanente leverages mPulse’s Social Determinants of Health Index to predict Medicare members’ Medication Adherence rates. And Rachel shared learnings and best practices for deploying innovative solutions to engage large populations about behavioral health.

After Chris Nicholson shared his key takeaways and and announced the winners of our Activate Awards, everyone boarded the historic yacht Zumbrota to cruise Marina Del Rey, celebrating the collaboration and shared insights of the day.

Be sure to look out for information on Activate 2020 in the new year!