Here we interview Amir Lewkowicz, co-founder and VP/Partnerships of Inspire. We see them as one of the most innovative alliance-makers in the Health 2.0 world.
1. Seems there were far too few Community health sites, and now the space is getting crowded-- how do you differentiate yourselves?
ANSWER: When we started Inspire in 2005 there really weren't any companies out there doing anything similar, and as you mentioned, now there are quite a few. This seems to validate the need and desire for patients and caregivers to communicate and support one another. Most online health community providers are aiming to attract members through their own branded communities. We approached the challenge differently, and this difference has become one of our key differentiators. Since day one we believed that the key to our success was in our ability to create and maintain strong partnerships with health organizations and offer first class service to them and to our community members. Health organizations, specifically non-profits, existed long before any online health communities. These non-profits are experts in the specific conditions they address. Our idea is simple: partner with these organizations, provide them tremendous service and value, and in doing so, create online communities that benefit from these organizations' experiences, credibility and reach. And the strategy is working. It also turns out that the quality of content and activity in our communities are high, thanks in part to the involvement of our partners.
Our non-profit partners include the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation, United Cerebral Palsy, National Osteoporosis Foundation, Lung Cancer Alliance, National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD), ALS Association, Ovarian Cancer National Alliance, National Cervical Cancer Coalition and The Children's Inn at NIH to name a few. We also partner with several for-profit organizations such as Discovery Health, US News & World Report and Ability Magazine. Feel free to visit these and others at www.inspire.com
2. Tell us about your approach with non-profits?
ANSWER: As I mentioned, partnering with non-profits has been our model since we started the company. We have learned the hard way that these relationships do not just happen overnight; it took us a long time to develop and nurture these relationships. We spent, and continue to spend, a great deal of time educating these organizations about online social networks, communities and user-generated content. We found that of the thousands of health non-profits in the U.S., most did not provide an online community offering, and of those that did (around 30% in 2006), it was typically a rudimentary message board and perhaps a blog. What a majority of non-profits excel at is education, advocacy, fundraising and research, not online community creation and management.
We also learned that patients and caregivers contact these non-profits initially for two main reasons: First, to receive authoritative information about their condition, and second, to connect with and communicate with others like them. Inspire enables non-profits to offer a powerful tool at no cost. What we offer our non profits is much more than just an online community (which we see other companies beginning to do). We offer an extensive portfolio of services, moderation and support, at no cost to the non-profit, and we have been honing our service over the past few years. We are in constant communication with our non-profit partners, gathering feedback from them, thinking of new ways to get people in the community, and helping our partners utilize the community to achieve their organizational goals.
3. What other area in online health interests you?
ANSWER: One of the areas I have become interested in over the past few months is technology around the area of medication compliance/adherence.
While to many it might not be the most glamorous idea, the problem of people not taking their medications is quite significant. According to recent studies, only about 50 percent of U.S. patients take their medicines as prescribed, resulting in approximately $177 billion annually in direct and indirect costs to the U.S. economy. What makes this a complex and interesting subject is that solving it requires changing human behavior.
I have seen companies like Intelecare, SilverLink and rxVitality trying to solve this issue though I am sure there are many more.
4. What is your approach to funding-- bootstrap or VC?
ANSWER: We are currently funded by angel investors. In addition to their financial investment, our investors are mission-driven and have been generous with their advice and industry connections. Most of us at Inspire were part of start-up companies in the late 1990s and we know the pros and cons of venture capital investment. We are open to investment from the right funds, but our goal is to grow as quickly as we can, and consider taking money at a later stage. In the recent past we actually declined a buyout offer from a very large health company, because we're growing so quickly that we feel that it's best to wait.
5. What's next on your product path?
ANSWER: Actually, we are about to roll out a major upgrade very soon. The most important new feature is that we'll connect all our communities together. In the past, if a member wanted to join five of our communities, he or she would need to register five different times.
This new upgrade will bring the communities under one tent, with a single registration for members. We did this because many members told us that they have multiple health interests. Often, a person may have one condition, be a caregiver for another condition, and be a friend of someone with yet another condition. Another reason for bringing the communities together is co-morbidity - where two conditions are highly correlated. We're excited about this new feature, and we've put a lot of thought and care into the right way to present it.
After the upgrade, as members join, they will be presented with conditions spanning the breadth of human health. Each condition will have its own group, and will be associated with one of our health organization partners. We've managed to create this in such a way that it offers our members’ breadth of choice as well as a deep vertical experience in particular health areas. We will continue to provide all the features and services we have offered our partners in the past and have even added new ones in our upgrade.
We are also starting pilot projects in clinical trial recruitment. When we created Inspire in 2005, we knew that there was a real, structural problem in connecting patients with clinical trials. The methodologies that are used such as billboards and radio advertising have changed little. While online clinical trial databases and registries exist, these are often unknown and underutilized. We also have a patent pending on the use of social networks for clinical trial recruitment.
Later this year you'll see us roll out some of our first clinical trial services. We're approaching this very carefully. While we know there is tremendous opportunity to help patients, we are developing the services with the input of our partners and industry experts in a way that protects our members. Privacy is our top priority. It's foundational for us, our highest principle. We do not sell names or personally identifiable information. What we are able to do is bridge relationships between patients and others in a safe and privacy protected environment. We put patients in control; we let them decide. That's our mission; it's the reason we created Inspire.
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