Castlight Health recently extended its healthcare management platform’s capabilities with a new module called Action. The SaaS solution uses predictive analytics to help benefits leaders determine what employee engagement campaigns to run, in the interest of helping workers make better health care choices while squeezing out unnecessary costs.
“Very few people understand their healthcare benefits,” says Jonathan Rende, chief research and development officer at Castlight. “All they know is that every year, the prices are going up and up and up.”
One example: You start a new job, choose a primary care physician and undergo your annual physical exam. The exam turns up a problem requiring a specialist. Many employees will simply go with whatever specialist their PCP refers them to, rather than do a thorough job of researching their options to find the provider possessing the best combination of price and reputation.
“The dirty secret of health care is that price is in no way connected to quality,” Rende says.
Predictive Engagement
Action uses a set of predictive models built on top of anonymized, HIPAA-compliant health care data such as medical claims and the types of searches Castlight users are running.
For example, the system could identify women who are likely to be pregnant or seeking to be pregnant in the near future based on keyword searches, the types of appointments they’re making, and demographic factors.
Once the benefits leader identifies this patient population, Action can run targeted engagement campaigns aimed at helping them find the right benefit services and best providers while making proactive and ultimately lower-cost choices about their care.
The system tracks the effectiveness of campaigns based on factors such as page views and vendor connections.
POV: “The challenge with most benefits systems is they only tell you what’s going on,” says Constellation Research founder R “Ray" Wang. “What Action does is arm organizations with the right information so they can augment their decision-making.”
“By evaluating the engagement outcomes, you now have the ability to deliver on mass personalization at scale,” Wang adds. “Taking a predictive insight, testing it, and then using it in action is really what's behind the Castlight product.”
