Cigna has developed a digital health coaching program, called Cigna Health Matters, that offers mobile tools, social media engagement, gamification, and web-based incentives. The program is available for Cigna's 14 million US members on employer health plans.

“Cigna Health Matters integrates the latest insights and practices of the sociology of engagement, motivation and rewarding behavior change with the latest in health tools and technology,” Cigna Vice President of Product Develompent Eric Herbek said in a statement. “By combining clinical insights, health coaches, digital tools, measurement and reward engines, we have our customers’ backs to help them get on the right path, and stay on it, for better health for themselves and their families.” 

The program begins with a gamified online health assessment. After completing the assessment and answering questions about the user's BMI, cholesterol and blood pressure, members are given a Health Matters Score. From there, as users work on improving their health, their score changes. The score also helps Cigna coaches and clinicians target the members that need the most help improving their health.

Cigna has also curated a health and wellness app store. The store has compiled the "most popular and effective health improvement apps". Once members have downloaded health apps, they can link those apps to their Cigna Health Matters dashboard and receive various incentives or rewards, depending on their plan.

Some of the features of Cigna Health Matters are similar to those mentioned as part of an initiative that Cigna announced last year: Cigna GoYou. A Cigna spokesperson told MobiHealthNews in an email that GoYou has been folded into Health Matters and renamed.

"The GoYou Marketplace – the curated health/wellness/fitness app store -- is a part of the Health Matters ecosystem. We have simply named it 'Apps & Activities', which in our user testing was found to be a more easily understood name," they wrote.

Cigna began working with another company called SocialWellth, as it developed GoYou, and that partnership continues for Health Matters, a Cigna spokesperson confirmed to MobiHealthNews. As we wrote last year: Members will be able to download apps recommended to them based on their Cigna profile, some of which will be marked with an “mWellth certification.”

As part of this announcement, Cigna also released a survey of 1,847 consumers on their health and wellness habits. Cigna found that 83 percent of respondents are taking steps to improve their health and of this group just 22 percent are using some kind of an online tool to do so.

In May, Cigna partnered with Samsung to launch a feature on Samsung’s S Health app called Coach by Cigna, which will launch exclusively on the Galaxy S5. The platform is being launched in 36 countries and 26 languages. The software, which Cigna describes as a “digital health guidance system,” will incorporate health information collected either manually through the smartphone or via sensors in the Galaxy Gear or Gear Fit. It will use that information to generate a personal health coaching regimen for users.