Larry Page and Sergey Brin were both only 25 when they teamed up to start Google, and Mark Zuckerberg was 19 when he launched Facebook from his Harvard dorm room. These well-known examples help illustrate an important fact: disruptive technological innovation usually originates from young minds.
We have two fine examples here in Canada: Alexandra Philp Reeves and Anna Melnyk, both 17. These young tech entrepreneurs have launched EmojiHealth, a healthcare messaging platform for teens. So far, the response has been impressive. EmojiHealth won the Innovation Award at the Summer 2016 Catapult Challenge Event in New York, as well as the ‘One to Watch’ MEDy Award at Exponential Medicine Conference, which was hosted by Singularity University in San Diego.
“Many people are surprised when they hear what we have done at 17,” says Philp Reeves. “They’re impressed by the fact that we’re getting started as entrepreneurs and starting our own business at such a young age. Many people also appreciate what a hard industry health care is to break into.
“Whether texting our friends, our parents, or using social media, young people are always using emojis and we wanted to bring that into the healthcare space.”
As the founders of Google and Facebook learned, the easiest way to achieve high growth fast is with a one-to-many (or, it could be argued, many-to-many), business-to-consumer platform. In health care, regulatory requirements would make it difficult for two teenagers to come up with a medical device. But an innovative software-driven messaging platform like EmojiHealth has an opportunity for dramatic growth.
“The app is 100% free to users,” says Melnyk. “The EmojiHealth business model is to work with the traditional health payers … to help them reach new teen audiences. By paying us to help them reach teens, we can help these groups increase adherence and revenues, or decrease healthcare costs by engaging their population.”
The idea behind the EmojiHealth platform is to empower teens to better manage their health and wellness by harnessing the power of visual communication—in this case in the form of emojis. Melnyk and Philp Reeves see three key advantages to emojis: they’re a great way to identify with the teen voice; they’re a powerful visual tool; and they communicate at an emotional level that can sometimes be hard to convey with words.
“Whether texting our friends, our parents, or using social media, young people are always using emojis and we wanted to bring that into the health-care space,” says Philp Reeves. “We really aim to engage youth by sharing content that is engaging and interesting to them. Young people have proved to be big fans of visuals, be they images, videos, infographics, or GIFs, so this is just another continuation of that.”
Philp Reeves and Melnyk point out that teens face an overwhelming amount of complex and often confusing health information, and rarely with a visual component. EmojiHealth can go a long way to offering them the information, tools and confidence that they need. But will it catch on? One stereotype of teenagers is that they can be somewhat indifferent to their health. However, it’s also true that this digital generation is unique.
“Our generation is like none before,” says Melnyk. “We have grown up surrounded by digital, and we demand a level of technology, authenticity, and simplicity that is unlike any group before us. While many people create technologies that may be great for teens, it’s the teen voice and the simplicity that are indispensable, and we think that we’ve mastered all three of these areas with EmojiHealth.”
The two young founders have benefitted from some mentoring by their parents. Melnyk’s father is Eugene Melnyk, the previous owner of Biovail. Ms. Philp Reeves’ parents are both physicians—her father, Dr. John Reeves, heads up Cossette Health.
“Alexandra and Anna have demonstrated that innovation in today’s marketplace requires the ability to pivot quickly and understand that you need to know where your users are—and find ways of getting there quickly,” says Dr. Reeves. “Over their first few months of solution testing, the girls moved their product model from SMS, to app, and then ultimately to a messaging platform as they sought to create the best user experience for their teen audience.”
EmojiHealth has been designed to help both healthy teens and those living with a medical condition. The content is personalized, and is designed to be engaging with tracker messages and reminders. An account can be opened through Facebook Messenger, with the user experience personalized based on age, gender, conditions, medication, and location.
“We are working with experts to ensure that all data collected in the app is stored securely in compliance with health information privacy regulations,” says Philp Reeves. “Interestingly, unlike many other generations, teens are not concerned about the sharing of their information.”
That is certainly true, and raises an interesting question: Is the notion of privacy being redefined by the younger generation? EmojiHealth, which harnesses the power of messenger bots, encourages ongoing conversations—which in turn could lead to positive outcomes. Ignorance, we can all agree, is a path to nowhere.
“In our focus groups, teens have literally said they would be fine with us sharing everything except their name in conjunction with their address,” says Melnyk. “Even though this is something we would never be doing, it is interesting to see the young person’s perspective on privacy.”
There is a wide range of partner opportunities here: within the pharmaceutical industry, among insurers, as well as for corporate goodwill and government. For those EmojiHealth users that have confirmed a pre-existing brand relationship, the platform allows partners to integrate their content, trackers, and reminders into the conversation streams. It can also adapt over time to reflect user habits.
“We really want to make sure that users feel EmojiHealth is growing and learning with the user,” says Philp Reeves. “Curating the EmojiHealth experience to ensure every user has the best experience possible is the ultimate goal.”
This kind of curation can reflect whether users within a given treatment plan respond well to different types of content, such as videos or articles. If the response is positive to video, and negative to written articles—or vice versa—content delivery can be adjusted to reflect their needs. This all adds up to a type of engagement that appears to be catching on with teens.
“We have grown exponentially in the past few weeks and have reached our first thousand subscribers,” says Melnyk. “They initially came primarily from within Canada, but are now located globally…Teens are increasingly engaged in their wellness. Health has become cool.”
It took a couple of seventeen-year-olds to realize that new messaging platforms like Facebook Messenger can deliver healthcare content and functionality through a ‘conversation’. But perhaps this makes sense, given that the best innovation is often user-led.
“Teens by nature understand the communication channels they use—and the way these channels are best leveraged to deliver the messages and programs that teens will engage with,” says Dr. Reeves. “By delivering a continuous stream of curated bite sized content in a way that feels like you are messaging a good friend, they’ve be able to engage teens in a powerful new dialogue that is completely patient-centric.”
This story originally appeared at CanadianHealthcareNetwork.ca.
