They had a year’s go at it in beta and now are closing it down. So many apps look good as a “proof of concept” and when you get them out there, all to often we find out the “model” doesn’t work in the “real” world as it appears in the “virtual” world and this must be one of those. I swear we are absolutely “drowning” in apps, ideas that someone has to help connect and then you have a software developer that brings it to life.
If it doesn’t have the appeal of the real world as it appears in the virtual world, then it doesn’t make it.
Movie “HER”– Good Example On How Folks Can’t Separate And/Or Unite The Virtual With The Real World, Billionaires Are Made Out of Those Who Know How to Keep These Areas “Gray” With Creating and Maintaining The Addictive Code That Does It…
The CEO came from “Patients Like Me”..a website platform with similar idea of connecting the patient, caregivers and others to track health conditions and offer support.
This is a big issue today with virtual and real worlds and where the line gets drawn and folks can’t figure it out. You have apps that few use and frustrated developers that thought their idea would work. I think sometimes myself if I wrote an app for every idea I had…well you get the drift of that one. A lot of things sound good but don’t end up being used and sometimes portions of the app end up somewhere else being an integrated module code to work with other code. We have a lot of that going on with the “cash for code” projects to where developers get paid a few thousand for their efforts and the sponsors get “inexpensive” code. W have enough out there to choke a horse in mobile apps. Insurers do quite a bit of this and it looks like this is what Aetna will do with perhaps moving some of the features to Healthagen, another company Aetna bought.
As we reported in our Friday in-depth report on payers at HIMSS, Aetna is shutting down its InvolveCare caregiver support app. The app has been in full beta, but will not receive a full commercial launch. Users will have until April 28 to download their data before having it deleted.
“InvolveCare was introduced last fall and was in the late stage of a Beta roll-out,” Aetna Communications Director Sherry Sanderford wrote in an email to MobiHealthNews. “At this time, we decided not to move into full commercial operation. Instead, we are moving the technology and learnings from the endeavor into Healthagen for possible future offerings.”
“When you look at creating a support network, with the enablement of technology it’s pushing toward actual integration and interaction between families,” he said. “Now you have something that actually encourages families to work together and then uses technology to enable it. And that actually, we believe in the long term is going to make a much more supported senior and ultimately reduce healthcare costs. And if we can reduce the loneliness, the depression, we will have changed their lives.”
http://mobihealthnews.com/30461/aetna-to-shut-down-new-caregiver-app-involvecare/
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