MINNEAPOLIS--()--RedBrick Health, an emerging leader in consumer-centric health improvement technology, announced today it has acquired Social Kinetics, a health engagement technology company.
“The market is sending a clear message: In order to have a real and lasting impact on population health, we need to address the health behaviors that drive more than 50 percent of all health care costs”
RedBrick Health will integrate Social Kinetics’ technology into its consumer health engagement platform to create a more personalized user experience. Social Kinetics’ technology uses advanced personalization and social gaming techniques to optimize the “behavior change pathway” for each individual. The result is a unique and rewarding consumer experience for each participant.
Social Kinetics was spun out of SRI International, a leading independent non-profit research institute, in 2008. The company was originally founded to create new applications for technologies developed in SRI’s Artificial Intelligence Center, including software that learns through interaction with users. Early Social Kinetics applications focused on accelerating expert knowledge dissemination across social networks. In 2009, Social Kinetics turned its focus to the challenge of consumer health engagement and sustained health behavior change.
In the health engagement space, Social Kinetics designed a multi-channel intervention platform called AIMS (Adaptive Interactive Management System) to change the paradigm of health coaching and online health improvement programs. Instead of following pre-defined intervention pathways, AIMS-powered programs dynamically adapt and enhance the experience for each participant based on machine learning principles.
“SRI has a 60-year history of transforming powerful ideas into profound innovations that create value and have a real human impact,” said Dr. Norman Winarsky, vice president for ventures, licensing, and strategic programs at SRI. “Our recent focus includes advancing the use of virtual personal assistants that tap machine learning to help solve real human problems. We are delighted to have RedBrick Health take the advances made by Social Kinetics in this area and create a solution to better address the important challenge of helping people achieve and maintain good health.”
During the past 24 months, RedBrick Health has introduced innovative health technologies to power consumer-centric population health improvement programs for large employers, resulting in engagement rates that routinely run three to five times industry norms. Innovations have included:
- A Health EarningsSM engine that aligns health care financing with healthy behaviors, creating a direct and personal return on investment.
- A healthy social competition engine that leverages “grassroots” social networks to drive broad-based health engagement, driving new cultural norms around health within large employers.
These advances have helped fuel triple digit growth in RedBrick Health’s business during both 2009 and 2010.
“The market is sending a clear message: In order to have a real and lasting impact on population health, we need to address the health behaviors that drive more than 50 percent of all health care costs,” said Kyle Rolfing, co-founder and chief executive officer of RedBrick Health. “To do that, we must create broad-based and sustained engagement. That’s exactly what we do. By incorporating breakthrough thinking and technologies from Social Kinetics, we can create the next generation of health improvement applications that bring our clients and the consumers they care about a genuinely different kind of experience, and stronger sustained results.”
About RedBrick Health
RedBrick Health is a health technology and services company that drives sustained engagement in health improvement programs through constant innovation and deep consumer insight. The company's health engagement platform blends a fresh, personalized consumer experience, impactful social networking tools and rewards that link individual financing to healthy behaviors. As a result, RedBrick Health delivers employers engagement rates far exceeding industry norms and the ability to fairly and responsibly control costs through increased employee accountability. Founded in 2006 and headquartered in Minneapolis, RedBrick Health serves large, self-insured employers and strategic distribution partners. For more information, visit www.redbrickhealth.com.
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RedBrick Health, RedBrick, employee benefits, health care benefits, health insurance, wellness, prevention, employee wellness, wellness incentives, health care financing, behavioral economics, health care reform, health assessments, health screenings, social networking, social games, health games, Minneapolis, Social Kinetics, Norman Winarsky, Kyle Rolfing
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