Healthcare Goes Mobile

When my husband and I planned a family trip to Nantucket recently, I started preparing for our vacation the way most people do – by reaching for my smartphone. Which airline has the best rates? What accommodations offer a convenient location with the most comfortable rooms? What activities would be fun for our two young children? It didn’t take long to realize that, as the saying goes, there truly is an app for that. We not only booked our flights, we also found a local farmer’s market and kid-friendly beaches. We downloaded apps that put island walking maps and restaurant reviews right at our fingertips. Mobile apps like these make it easy to sift through an overwhelming amount of information and deliver precisely the tools you need, precisely when and where you need them. So why can’t the healthcare system do the same? To answer that question, you have to acknowledge that the healthcare industry is just plain tough. Numerous government mandates, a jumble of regulatory bodies, and strict privacy laws erect enormous barriers for health plans and hospital systems that want to use digital technologies to engage their members and patients.

Last year’s Accenture Consulting report, “Losing Patience: Why Healthcare Providers Need to Up Their Mobile Game,” put the problem in clear focus when it found hospitals have engaged less than 2 percent of their patients using mobile apps. While population health and patient engagement are real goals for healthcare, the industry is falling way behind as consumers continue to depend more and more on their smartphones for the information they need. Old school websites, cumbersome patient portals and indecipherable online plan benefits just don’t measure up. Roughly nine of ten adults in the United States own a mobile device, and 92 percent of Millennials use smartphones as their primary source of information. Today, everyone expects to be able to find an in-network doctor, look up benefits, schedule an appointment and track symptoms on their smartphone just as easily as they can, say, find the best lobster roll on the island of Nantucket.

That’s where Wildflower Health comes in. We know that health plans and hospital systems need to offer mobile access to their members and patients, and we understand how to work within the complexities of the healthcare ecosystem to make that possible. We can “do mobile” better and faster than our customers can, and we can do it in a way that ensures a pleasant, efficient user experience. Our products offer turnkey convenience, strict compliance and great configurability, which enables customers to get up and running with a mobile program quickly, with all the branding and unique content that suits your service lines and business goals. Built on a business model that starts with the family, our enterprise mobile health programs are proven to engage members and patients, retain their loyalty and protect revenues.

Today, I’m proud to introduce our new website, a visual representation of the many ways Wildflower Health has grown since its birth in 2012. Please take a look to see who we are, what we offer, and how our passion for connecting families to better health will put health plans and hospitals right at consumers’ fingertips. Leah Sparks is Co-founder and CEO of Wildflower Health.