Aetna: Ultimate goal is health info on-the-go

By Brian Dolan
01:30 am
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AetnaAetna's Head of Digital Engagement Strategy and Innovation Robert Heyl gave attendees at this week's Healthcare Unbound conference in Seattle a sneak peak at the company's mobile plans as well as an update on how well Aetna's customers have been engaged with its health information portal SmartSource.

Heyl said SmartSource aims to bring resources together that enable Aetna members to go to one reliable online location to find the information they need to make informed health decisions. The site aims to be personalized and relevant to the user -- so the content is shaped by the user's health profile on file with Aetna. If a user has diabetes, for example, SmartSource might suggest new diabetes management tools to user upon logging in.

Of Aetna's 6 million members about 13 percent or about 780,000 members have visited the SmartSource online portal.
About 53 percent of those visitors were female, while 47 percent were male.
Aetna found that 64 percent of all traffic was from members between the ages of 40 and 64-years-old.
The women users searched for personal health information about 41 percent of the time, while the men users were looking for health information for themselves 73 percent of the time. 
Most popular searches were for  diabetes, pregnancy/infertility, obesity/weight loss/fitness, high blood pressure/cholesterol, depression/mental health and pain management.

Heyl said that Aetna understood that health decisions mostly occur while people are going about their daily lives, so the ultimate goal is to take the information in SmartSource and bring it to the mobile platform. While Heyl didn't give a time frame for a mobile application launch, he did include a mock-up for what a mobile app for SmartSource might look like someday (pictured above.)

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