Tag: Saatchi & Saatchi Wellness

A Student’s Perspective: Investors in the Hot Seat Helps Entrepreneurs Help the Health Sector

Posted on by smwnyc

Stephanie Vatz is a student at Columbia’s School of Journalism. She is one of ten students providing on the ground coverage of SMWNYC- all from the student’s perspective. She is providing her report from Investors in the Hot Seat. You can follow Stephanie on Twitter at @stephvatz.

 

The Saatchi and Saatchi Health and Wellness Hub displayed an array health tech devices on tables this Thursday, as entrepreneurs wandered around the space, mingling with investors and other business people all looking to use their start-ups to improve the world of health. They had all come to hear a team of health investors answer their questions about how to gain seed or development money for their projects.

Among the company heads was Kevin Dawkins, who runs CFFone, a mobile social network company that provides support for teenagers with cystic fibrosis. Ordinarily, Dawkins explained that cystic fibrosis prohibited the teens from spending time with other cystic fibrosis patients because of risk of infection, but the social network allowed them to share stories of their disease and support each other digitally.

CFFone had already received a grant from NIH, but the grant was going to expire in about a year so Dawkins came to the event to learn more about how to find the right investors and pitch to them.

“The people who spoke are exactly the types of people we are going to be pitching to,” Dawkins said after the event.

Those investors he was referring to were Steve Krein of Startup Health, Dave Whitlinger of the NYeHealth Collaborative, Todd Pietri of Milestone Venture Partners, Mohit Kaushal of West Health Fund, Maria Gorsch of the New York City Investment Fund and Brad Weinberg of Blueprint Health.

The six panelists took the stage to describe their own businesses as well as the model companies they wanted to invest in–organizations that could bridge the disconnect between the government stakeholders and patients on the ground in order to create better and more affordable health care.

The conference comes at a time when the stimulus package that President Obama passed was like giving “rocket fuel to this sector”, when West Coast investors are beginning to invest in East Coast companies and when health industry is looking to the private sector for new software and technologies.

Like at many of the other SMW events, the speakers mentioned “Big Data” and discussed how it could be a valuable tool for emerging technology companies to offer, whether it be through software for hospitals or analysis and access to data for patients themselves.

“Everything we do is around lowering the cost of health care,” Kaushal said.

A Student’s Perspective: The Sanofi Open Innovation Challenge Discusses its Own Challenges (and Advantages) to Putting Together An Event of Its Magnitude

Posted on by smwnyc

Stephanie Vatz is a student at Columbia’s School of Journalism. She is one of ten students providing on the ground coverage of SMWNYC- all from the student’s perspective. She is providing her report from How We Did It: The Sanofi Open Innovation Challenge. You can follow Stephanie on Twitter at @stephvatz.

Last year, French pharmaceutical company Sanofi partnered with Data Design Diabetes for the Sanofi Open Innovation Challenge. The Challenge took young entrepreneurial innovators and health experts alike to develop a way to improve the quality of life and care for the over 25.8 million Americans living with diabetes.

To explain how the Open Innovation Challenge came to be, Michele Polz, Senior Director of Patient Solutions at Sanofi, and Aman Bhandari, Senior Advisor to the CTO of Health & Human Services came together on Feb. 15, discussing their initial project and upcoming the 2012 competition.

Polz described her desire to move “beyond the drugs” as a diabetes franchise and look at new models for treating diabetes including new technologies and designs. From this, stemmed the challenge–a five-step process that gives away over $200,000 in prize money and grants health entrepreneurs the chance to raise seed money and get their name out.

This year’s process is as follows: first, Data Design Diabetes and Sanofi use online crowd-sourcing to figure out what areas of diabetes care need the most repairing. Next, everyone can submit ideas for designing a product that addresses what matters most to people living with diabetes in the United States. Five of these entries are picked to win $20,000 and to enter an intensive project mentorship program and design boot camp. From there two are selected and given an additional $10,000 to bring their projects to real communities and one winner is chosen.

Last year’s winner, Ginger.io also appeared at the Health and Wellness Hub talk to describe their behavior analytics company that uses a mobile sensing platform to change patient behavior depending on health conditions and symptoms.

For the 2012 Challenge, the crowd-sourcing online survey has just been closed and the company is selecting a focus for this year’s competition, but the team seems almost as excited for other company challenges that have been inspired by Sanofi.

“It’s great to see someone who’s an entrepreneur and innovator, up there on stage with someone who is a major player in their field,” said Bhandari. “We are very serious about spurring innovation and entrepreneurship, whether it be in the public sector or private sector…We just want to promote the best ideas.”

A Student’s Perspective: Frank Moss of the MIT Media Lab Makes Health Innovation A Collaborative Effort

Posted on by smwnyc

Stephanie Vatz is a student at Columbia’s School of Journalism. She is one of ten students providing on the ground coverage of SMWNYC- all from the student’s perspective. She is providing her report from Frank Moss on The 2012 MIT Health and Wellness Innovation Hackathon. You can follow Stephanie on Twitter at @stephvatz.

As head of the New Media Medicine group at the MIT, Frank Moss heads entrepreneurial biotechnology projects that attempt to improve health care and medicine.

He displayed inventions like an artificial intelligence nurse that helped record patients’ auditory and visual problems for a real-life while responding to patient concerns to demonstrate comprehension. Using the example of a young woman with diabetes, Moss illustrated how the woman could use the artificial intelligence system to connect with a real doctor and solve her problem more efficiently. The whole system was a bit similar to the way Apple uses artificial intelligence to answer customer support questions.

“We have to combine academia with industry,” he said when discussing the huge risks the MIT Media lab and his own company, BlueFin Technology, try to take when thinking of medical models for the future. “Big companies don’t take risk, but they must have the willingness to take risks and fail.”

Not all of Moss’ projects were as complicated; some even seemed easy to implement into today’s healthcare world. Applications for mobile phones, for example, could be used to improve the likelihood of a patient taking care of himself.

Among the apps that Moss suggested were medical clocks to inform the patient when to take his medication, medical charts so the patient could see the problems for himself and social networking to provide comfort and camaraderie among patients.

A Student’s Perspective: Monday’s Health and Wellness Keynote Speakers Carol McCall and Michael Graves

Posted on by smwnyc

Stephanie Vatz is a student at Columbia’s School of Journalism. She is one of ten students providing on the ground coverage of SMWNYC- all from the student’s perspective. She is providing her report from Carol McCall on Big Data & The Eye of the Beholder and Michael Graves on People First: Redesigning the Hospital Room. You can follow Stephanie on Twitter at @stephvatz.

In the realm of health and medicine, Social Media Week NYC has been bringing technology and humanity to the forefront in some surprising ways.

On Monday at the Saatchi and Saatchi Wellness Hub in SoHo, two keynote speakers, Carol McCall and Michael Graves, discussed improvements and potential solutions to patient care problems.

As the Chief Strategy Officer at GNS Healthcare, Carol McCall’s main job is looking at data. Her presentation however, was more focused on using technology to alter patient behavior both as a preventative health measure and a way for patients with similar experiences to commiserate or share stories.

McCall drew upon examples to illustrate the idea of taking an active role in one’s own health by changing attitude. Her primary interest was patient psychology and she offered techniques to either change people’s perspectives of their own life stories, positively modify self-perception, or find new ways to help people help themselves.

A key theme in Monday’s discussions was innovation. With social media it appears that experience in the field you work in might even be a detriment to thinking outside of the box and shedding new light on old problems.

The second keynote speaker of the morning, world-renowned architect and designer Michael Graves, knew very little about health care until he had to. Graves rolled to the stage in a wheelchair after a CBS Sunday Profiles clip of him finished playing on stage.

In 2003, a mysterious infection paralyzed Graves from the waist down, suddenly making him dependent on others, even inside his own hospital room.

Once he was on stage, Graves pressed a button on his wheelchair that made the front wheels roll under the back wheels until he was tall enough for everyone to see. It was the first example in a string of innovative design to come.

He started his discussion of reinventing in hospital room design by talking about his own frustrating experience of being unable to reach the sink faucet at the hospital, or being able to see himself in the mirror. Constantly, he was reminded that he couldn’t walk anymore.

“Oh, that’s not for me,” he said he once thought about the out of reach faucet, “that’s for people who can walk.”

Now, Graves is dedicating his career to designing new products, furniture and buildings with the disabled in mind. He displayed images of reinvented hospital bedside tables that would be easier for cleaning crews to disinfect, more functional shower stools, chairs that were easier to get out of and patient chairs to make the transition from operating room to hospital room more comfortable. He even made his employees sit in wheelchairs while designing some of the new products for him.

Although Graves couldn’t stand-up himself, his audience stood for him; he received a standing ovation before and after his presentation.

Beauty’s In The Eye Of The Blogger

Posted on by differencesmag

This post is a series of blogs contributed by SMW NYC media partner Differences Magazine. To learn more about Differences Magazine and to see the original post by Jessica Bender, please click here. 

Our relationship with the concept of beauty is a complex one – one moment you feel like the most gorgeous person in the world, and the next you’re cowering in a corner because you’re so ashamed of how you look. On average, only four percent of people believe they’re beautiful, and most of the blame can be given to forms of media like Sports Illustrated’s annual swimsuit issue or plastic women dominating the airwaves. However, as discussed on February 15th at The Changing Face of Technology: Click Here for Beauty, social media is redefining what beauty is.

According to the panelists, platforms like blogging and social networks are breaths of fresh air when it comes to talking about beauty. “Social media can give you a clearer idea about what’s beautiful,” says Art Markman, professor of psychology and marketing at the University of Texas at Austin. “It gives people the opportunity to make them feel better about themselves…and provides the opportunity to think outside the box about beauty.”

beauty techFor a younger demographic, the opportunity to speak their minds about what’s beautiful is appreciated. “With younger [people],” Real Simple’s Beauty and Health Director Didi Gluck said, “there’s more acceptance of different standards of beauty because everybody has a voice where they can voice how they feel.”

Consumers typically find a community of their own to connect with, but beauty brands welcomes conversations about beauty and their products with open arms – in exchange for customer loyalty and future revenue. “The bloggers [who are avid consumers] who are taking over the online world tend to be normal women,” NewBeauty Magazine Editorial Video and Interactive Director Susan Yara begins. “They push the bottom line for a lot of brands…if they don’t trust or like you, they’re not going to buy from you.” More importantly, brands want to be a huge force on social networking sites like Twitter or Pinterest. For this very reason, Yara stresses, “Social media is making brands accountable, so [your brand doesn’t] want to be a bad boyfriend on social media.”

“A relationship with your neighborhood sells more than anything,” says Markman. “Brands have to develop a personality, so authenticity from top to bottom is key. [They] have to get out of the mode of constant advertising…[and] engage in real conversation [with their customer].”

Keeping SMW Healthy: Whole Foods

Posted on by Nicky Yates

It’s the small things that sometimes help move something from ordinary into amazing. Someone giving you their seat on the train. Free movies on a flight. Power charging stations at events. Snacks and beverages at Social Media Week.

You’ve seen them around. You’ve taken some of the fruit- admit it. So, today we thank Whole Foods. Positioning Food Carts at our Advertising & Marketing Hub at JWT, Health & Wellness Hub at Saatchi & Saatchi Wellness and our Global Society Hub at Big Fuel, Whole Foods is keeping you energized with snacks on the go.

And that’s not all. They’re sharing their success stories. Be Global, Act Local at their Bowery location on Thursday, February 16, will provide accounts on how to have both a global and local presence to meet consumer needs. With Whole Foods’ online presence and incredible community engagement efforts, they tend to know this area pretty well. So, register today and chat with them about what you can do with your business.

But don’t forget to grab a snack after the session.

Defeating the Enemy of Wellness — You

Posted on by Michelle Welsch

Guest post by Jacob Braude, VP of Planning at Saatchi & Saatchi Wellness

Wellness has an enemy, and despite what you may have been told, it’s not Voldemort – it’s you. And me. It’s all of us. When it comes to wellness, we are often our own greatest adversaries. But don’t get down on yourself, because it isn’t really your fault. The fault lies in your unconscious – or rather in the way your brain has evolved to divvy up responsibilities between your conscious awareness and your unconscious. First, let’s recap some of the more staggering evidence that you are the enemy of your wellness. Then we’ll talk about how your brain gets you into this mess, and we’ll introduce some of the new research and technologies that are making it easier for you to get out.

We already know that poor choices in what you eat and how often you get some exercise has led to a staggering rise in obesity – and all of the health risks and costs that come along with being overweight. But beyond that oversaturated story, we are learning that even something as widely consumed as sugar may have dramatic negative effects on our wellness – regardless of our weight. According to this lengthy and terrifying piece in the NY Times, some research indicates that sugar (which is in pretty much all processed foods these days) may be the poison that has been behind the rapid rise of heart disease, hypertension, and even cancer. In the article, they claim that sugar and high fructose corn syrup, could account for up to 80% of all cancers. There’s way too much science for me to explain that claim here, so go read it for yourself – it’s worth it (and yes, I still eat a ton of sugar).

Now that you’re sufficiently freaked out, let’s talk about your brain. The human brain is the most complex structure in the known universe. There are more connections in your brain than there are atoms in the universe. And all of that magnificent processing power runs on approximately 20 watts of electricity. Compare that to the 85,000 watts required to run IBM’s Watson (the super computer they built that recently dominated past Jeopardy champions), and you get a sense of just how remarkable your brain is. One of the most important ways your brain conserves power is to automate as much of your behavior as possible by shifting it into your unconscious. It takes a lot of energy to make a conscious decision – to sort through all of the options and make a choice. It takes very little energy to follow a pre-programmed script.

Here’s a good example: have you ever gotten in your car with the intention of going someplace, then you zoned out and realized that you had driven yourself somewhere else? Driving is a decision-intensive activity. You have to take in a lot of sensory data and make a lot of choices. How much gas, when to break, where to turn – but almost all of us can make these decisions while thinking about something completely unrelated, because these behaviors have become automated and are handled by our unconscious.

Wellness behaviors are handled the same way. What you eat. When you exercise. How you handle stress. All of these behaviors are largely automated, and once they are programmed into your unconscious, it’s ridiculously hard to re-program them. It requires persistence, effort and repeated failure. It requires willpower.

Luckily for us we live in an era where we are not just becoming aware of how our own automated behaviors are sabotaging our personal wellness, we have new technologies (like the passive monitoring FitBit or UP) and insights to help us be more successful at reprogramming ourselves. I’m going to talk about three of the big ones at Social Media Week and run a live experiment to help you understand this, on Friday 2/17 at 11am. If you can’t make it, I’ll follow up this post with more info on what I spoke about. The three I will tackle are:

Willpower. We now know from a number of experiments, that willpower is a real thing, and that it functions under similar rules as your muscles. It is fueled by glucose, it gets stronger with training and it has a finite amount of strength – meaning every conscious decision you make will make the next choice harder.

Social influence. Lots of research has begun to unearth how the people around you influence your programmed behaviors – often without you even knowing it is happening. This has big consequences for the role of social media in health and wellness.

Feedback loops. The proliferation of devices that measure our behavior, and the use of data visualization to reflect that behavior back at us in totally new ways, has rapidly accelerated our ability to deliberately reprogram our behaviors.

I’m going to wrap all this info inside an experiment to test one of the key hypotheses: that socially-enabled feedback loops can strengthen your willpower. Remember to register to attend and look out for an announcement for the beginning of the experiment. We won’t have any idea before the talk whether it will work or not, so it should be fun to see the results live.

In the mean time, please visit our Quora board on willpower and feedback loops to learn more and contribute to the conversation.

Hope to see you there.

Guest Post: A Closer Look at The Health & Wellness Hub

Posted on by Sara Haile-Mariam

This is a guest post from Sharon Mandler, Sr. Digital Startegist at Saatchi & Saatchi Wellness.  You can follow her on twitter @sharonmandler  or @Saatchiwellness.

We’re at a tipping point for the health and wellness industry. We’re about to see a massive change where more and more people are seizing their health and wellness. They’re becoming aware of their own health data and what that means, taking charge of their health records, and moving from info seekers to seekers and advisors.

There’s a proliferation of what we call “peer to peer healthcare” where people are reaching out to others just like them to ask questions about conditions and treatments; and people just like them are answering and sharing their experiences.  We see a growing amount of interaction in patient communities, in forum discussions about prescription drugs and in online conversations about cosmeceuticals.

This is a movement of compassion.

Ultimately this is a very good thing. We know that by sharing and passing on information we’re accelerating the pace at which truths and innovations come to light. This means that through social technologies, we’re helping one another live better, healthier lives. It also means that the role of brands and brand marketing in this category is changing.

At Saatchi & Saatchi Wellness, we work with our clients to help them understand and own their roles in this exciting new world of health and wellness. Our goal as an agency is to motivate and educate people to improve their total well-being.  To us, working with Social Media Week and Luminary Labs to host the first Health & Wellness hub is the natural next step to extend the conversations that will help us all live better lives.

We invite you to join us at the Health & Wellness hub to explore and collaborate, crowdsource and engage.

We’ll kick things off on Monday with a fireside chat about The Creative Social Revolution in health and wellness between Helayne Spivak, Saatchi & Saatchi Wellness’s Chief Creative Officer, and Mashable’s Chief Operating Officer, Sharon Feder. On Tuesday, join us for a keynote from Frank Moss about MIT’s 2012 Health and Wellness Innovation Hackathon; later in the week we’ll crowdsource guidelines for the FDA in social media and conduct a group experiment on willpower.

Until then, be well.

SM

 

 

 

Five Reasons to Visit the Health & Wellness Hub

Posted on by Nicky Yates

In 2012, Social Media Week New York introduces the first Health & Wellness Hub to serve as a platform to empower change in health through collaboration. Hosted by Saatchi & Saatchi Wellness and curated by Luminary Labs, the Health & Wellness Hub will take place at Saatchi & Saatchi’s ground floor auditorium, and offers seating for 400 guests as well as a livestream. The event runs from February 13-17, 2012.

We spoke to Luminary Labs CEO Sara Holoubek on what’s hot at the Health & Wellness Hub.

 
1. It’s about people.
Given the rate at which social technologies are changing the face of healthcare, it is quite easy to get caught up in the tech. And yet solving for health is about humanity. Or as keynote Michael Graves says “People first.” We’ll kick of the week with a human-centered approach to health, from a big data to hospital design to Regina Holliday’s personal story of how she became a patient advocate. Later in the day, participants will roll up their sleeves with Jessica Hammer to learn how to design for desire in health. Also in the spirit of humanity, Johnson & Johnson will close the day with a networking cocktail reception.
 

2. It’s about tech.
We’re going to explore, demystify, and even challenge the role of the technology that is changing the face of healthcare. Frank Moss kicks off the day with a lively discussion of the 2012 MIT Health and Wellness Innovation Hackathon. J.C. Herz will help us unpack the quantified self, followed by a panel on the role of sensors in health. We’ll also explore gaming in the panel, “This Game Will Make You Healthier.”
 

3. We’ll collaborate.
There is no silver bullet in health, and change requires partnership and collaboration. Michele Polz of Sanofi and Aman Bhandari of Health & Human Services will detail how their two organizations partnered to identify new innovations in diabetes. In the afternoon, well take a look at the role of collaboration in wellness, with a keynote from Dr. Roizen of the Cleveland Clinic and a panel on how our perception of beauty affects our behavior and purchase patterns. Last, but not least, participants will get a chance to crowdsource the ideal FDA social media guidelines, as well as comment for the Physician Payment Sunshine Act.
 

4. We’ll Accelerate.
Jay Walker, founder of Priceline and TEDMED chairman & curator will set the stage on Thursday as startups, investors, and strategic partners converge to make it happen. We’re putting the investors in the hot seat, asking them to “pitch” the startups. Later in the day we’ll connect strategic investors and startups via an interactive matchmaking session.
 

5. We’re going to change the game.
We’ll wrap up the week with the ideas and case studies. Participants will get the opportunity to take part in an socially-enabled feedback experiment, learning how little acts of willpower help train your willpower muscle. The week will wrap up with Feast on Health, hosted the fabulous Jerri Chou.