Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Interview with Dan Hickey, SVP of Products at Alliance Health (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: When you look at what happens in the industry, mobile, social, and technology in general are impacting the healthcare industry in a big way. What are some of the key trends you observe?

Dan Hickey: I think it is the big push in healthcare right now. It is being done in a very fragmented way. But the big push is around patient engagement. Everybody is pushing for patient engagement, because a couple of things are accomplished. If you can do patient engagement and do it well … everybody in healthcare would give you a different definition of patient engagement, although there are standardized models that have been created and that I think are particularly useful. But it is still very complex and almost academic in nature. >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Interview with Dan Hickey, SVP of Products at Alliance Health (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What do you make people do? Somebody who is depressed, is that person engaging?

Dan Hickey: They are engaging with others. They are sharing stories, motivating each other, helping each other, etc. Empathy in communities goes a long way. >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Interview with Dan Hickey, SVP of Products at Alliance Health (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s switch to the other side of the equation – to the consumers. In your networks, what are the behaviors of the consumers? What are they doing there?

Dan Hickey: Some of our consumers are in a discovery mode, where they are looking at information around symptoms and early diagnosis, or troubleshooting issues they may have managing their conditions, and they may be looking at content we created or content we created from other sources. We work with Mayo Clinic and with Joslin Diabetes Center. >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Interview with Dan Hickey, SVP of Products at Alliance Health (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Is it the American audience you are catering to?

Dan Hickey: Yes. It is mostly the U.S. at this time.

SM: And how big is the company?

DH: We are a $30 million-plus business. >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Interview with Dan Hickey, SVP of Products at Alliance Health (Part 1)

Dan Hickey is the senior vice president of products at Alliance Health, a social networking company that provides a community platform for people with health conditions. Dan has almost 17 years of experience in digital media, having worked for AOL and Meredith Corporation. In this interview he talks about how people are able connect with and share their issues and experiences through the Alliance Health platform and what benefits the company’s service brings to healthcare providers and patients.

Sramana Mitra: Dan, let’s start with what Alliance does. Introduce us to Alliance, tell us what the company does, what you are doing and especially what you are doing in the mobile and social area. >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Interview with Kristin Muhlner, CEO of newBrandAnalytics (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: I think social media marketing is extremely complex and time consuming. The analytics part is getting automated more by players such as your company, but the actual marketing part is still incredibly manual. If you are doing consumer marketing or any kind of brand marketing that requires you to seriously use social media to get your distribution – which now is the reality of the lives of most businesses – you have to do social media marketing. It is a very manual process. >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Interview with Kristin Muhlner, CEO of newBrandAnalytics (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Are you a venture-funded company, bootstrapped company, or something else? What is the genesis of your business?

Kristin Muhlner: We are venture backed by NEA and by Revolution.

SM: What is the revenue range of your company? >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Interview with Kristin Muhlner, CEO of newBrandAnalytics (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: You are talking a lot about domain-specific ontologies and workflows. How many domains are you covering right now?

Kristin Muhlner: Today we have five service-based ontologies. We have one for food and beverage, one for hospitality, one for retail, one for healthcare products and one for government. All of those are under a general ontology that is unified under a service- or product-based organization. It speaks of general types of experiences that an individual might have when engaging with an organization. That can be modified to support any type of organization or industry. >>>