This week Castlight Health, which offers a personalized health care shopping platform that helps employees better understand the price of medical services and the quality of certain providers, has launched its first mobile app: Castlight Mobile is currently available as a native app for Apple iOS and Google Android devices users, but the company suggests BlackBerry users and others can access the platform through an optimized mobile site, too. The free apps are only available to employees at companies that already use Castlight's healthcare costs platform.
While Castlight's list of customers includes various self-insured employers, like financial services firms and biotech companies, the Castlight customers most excited about the app's launch are those with employees who don't tend to spend their day behind a computer screen, Ethan Prater, vice president of products at Castlight Health told MobiHealthNews in a recent interview. Retail store chains, grocery store chains, and mining companies are among the Castlight customers that have looked forward to Castlight Mobile, Prater said.
"These types of employees tend to over index as smartphone users than even some of the white collar workers that we serve," Prater said. "While retail employees and grocery store employees may not sit behind a computer all day, they tend to spend most of their time in the break room on their smartphones."
Prater noted that the app will make it easier for Castlight users to engage their primary care providers in discussions about costs and quality measures for specialists the PCP refers them to.
"We call this feature 'check your referral'," Prater said. "People don't generally want to change their primary care physician since that is someone they trust. It's not where the cost is, anyway. The cost is in downstream referrals like specialists. So we created this feature that enables users at the point of care... to very quickly look up and locate the specialist [the PCP recommends] using the app. Then, [the patient] can view that specialist's cost and quality metrics and ask [their] provider: Is this the specialist we are talking about?"
Prater said the conversation can then turn to other option that the app calls the patient's attention to and help start a conversation about higher quality and lower cost options for referrals.
"This is a very mobile-specific use case," Prater said. "You'll find that we designed this so it is extremely fast for someone to do that at the point of care."
Castlight sources its quality metrics from a combination of public and private sources, including the HHS Health Data Initiative, Leapfrog, NCQA, and more recently state quality collaboratives like an organization called Minnesota Community Measurement. Castlight also leverages patient satisfaction data from companies like Vitals and Citysearch, which Prater said are important, complementary data sources for decision-making, but different from true quality measures.
The app also includes GPS-enabled provider look-up that flows into turn-by-turn directions to the facility. The app also offers a graphical explanation of the user's personal plan status that helps user's understand their deductibles since plans can be complex.
Almost all of the features offered on the desktop, online version of Castlight are present in the app except for one: Castlight found that beta users of the app didn't see a need to be able to access past care claims to see how much an employer paid or the user paid for past care. Prater said that Castlight may add this feature in the future, but for now it's one of the few features stripped out for those using the app.
Castlight was founded four years ago by Todd Park, Giovanni Colella, and Bryan Roberts. Park is now the US Federal CTO and former CTO of HHS. Colella previously co-founded Relay Health but is the current CEO of Castlight. Roberts is a partner at venture capital firm Venrock.
More on Castlight's mobile app in the press release below:
SAN FRANCISCO, Mar 28, 2012 -- Castlight Health, developer of a personalized health care shopping platform, today announced the launch of Castlight Mobile, a new offering that extends the power of the Castlight Health platform to users’ preferred mobile devices. Available as a native application for Apple iOS and Google Android, Castlight Mobile provides users the flexibility to view health care cost and quality data at anytime and from anywhere. BlackBerry and other smartphone users can also access an optimized mobile Web experience. The mobile products are available today to users at all of Castlight’s employer customers, at no additional charge.
Offered by innovative companies to their employees, the Castlight Health platform transforms the way consumers shop for health care. The personalized, secure platform provides employees a wealth of data about the price of medical services, the quality of physicians and facilities, as well as important educational and convenience information. With Castlight, employers can maintain or improve the quality of employees’ care and lower total health care spend.
“Traditionally, transparency into the cost and quality of health care services has been largely unavailable to consumers. We are changing this paradigm by enabling companies to offer their employees easy access to the data they need to make better health care decisions,” said Ethan Prater, vice president of products at Castlight Health. “Castlight Mobile gives our users another access point to informative health care data, regardless of their location.”
“Many of our talented employees spend their time with customers on the salon floor, rather than in front of computers, so their smartphones often act as their primary computing devices,” said Allison Brown, director of employee services, Regis Corporation. “With new mobile options for accessing the Castlight platform, our employees will have easy access to cost and quality health care information wherever they are. We expect that in addition to helping our staff save money, this offering will also help them become more engaged in their health and wellness.”
Transparency into Health Care Cost and Quality, Direct from a User’s Preferred Mobile Device
The new mobile offerings deliver the key functionality of the Castlight Health platform in a secure, easy-to-use format that is tightly integrated to the Web-based portal to ensure a unified user experience. Regardless of their preferred mobile device, users can find care based on a doctor’s name, specialty or a condition; get on-the-go access to up-to-date health plan information; and keep critical health care information -- such as specialists and family doctors -- in one place.
“Today, when doctors recommend specialists, most people will take their word for it,” added Prater. “We’re all about ensuring that health care consumers are better informed -- no matter where they are. With Castlight Health’s mobile offerings, users can become more informed about the care they’re receiving and paying for, before they go.”
To learn more about the Castlight Health Mobile, please visit: www.castlighthealth.com/mobile .
About Castlight Health
Castlight Health enables employers, their employees, and health plans to take control of health care costs and improve care. Named #1 on The Wall Street Journal’s list of “The Top 50 Venture-Backed Companies” for 2011 and one of Dow Jones’ 50 Most Investment-Worthy Technology Start-Ups, Castlight Health helps the country’s self-insured employers and health plans empower consumers to shop for health care. Castlight Health is headquartered in San Francisco and backed by prominent investors including Venrock, Oak Investment Partners, Maverick Capital, Morgan Stanley Investment Management, Wellcome Trust, Cleveland Clinic, and U.S. Venture Partners. For more information, please visit our web site at http://www.castlighthealth.com or call (415) 829-1400.
SOURCE: Castlight Health
