August 22, 2008
Monetizing A Mobile Application )Gold Mobile)
Traveling far from home is an exciting way to expand your horizons and a sure bet to increase the odds you will need medical care while away. Read how software company HTH Worldwide, integrated mobile to generate a totally new revenue stream.
Problem:
HTH Worldwide is a leading provider of healthcare services for travelers. Over the years, they’ve provided health insurance and healthcare information to those traveling, studying or living away from home. Global travelers, whether traveling for leisure, business or study, need to manage unexpected and chronic health conditions, common travel-related illnesses as well as security risks. HTH Worldwide provides health insurance plans and global medical assistance services for business and leisure travelers as well as students abroad.
Because of the convergence of two major trends, HTH needed a worldwide mobile platform to extend its healthcare solution to its customer base. First, the number of Americans traveling overseas is higher than ever – 64 million in 2007. Second, web-enabled mobile phones have become ubiquitous around the world. Most people have one in their pocket, purse or backpack
Solution:
In the past, HTH had provided this information to their customers through an online portal. Because a major portion of their customers are mobile, HTH worldwide needed to extend information access to their customers while they were mobile, as well as provide enhanced and translated medical information services when they traveled abroad.
Besides the HTH Worldwide searchable physician database, HTH also wanted to offer many similar features to their online solution and other helpful medical tools for travelers abroad including:
- Searchable Hospitals, Clinics and Pharmacies - profiles for over 3,400 notable facilities around the world. Many are contracted directly with HTH including Emergency Room Hospitals, Urgent Care )Walk-In) clinics and notable local pharmacies )over 500 selected pharmacies in 126 countries).
- Personalized Health and Security Alerts - published daily via SMS/Text messaging and email. The alerts highlight breaking news about risks that arise along the traveler’s personal itinerary.
- Group Text/SMS Messaging “txt5SM“- a custom application developed for mPassport allows subscribers to keep up to five friends and family members informed of their travels via text messaging or email. The subscribers save time and money by sending five messages for the price of one. All 5 subscribers receive the same group emails.
- Medication Translation - covers over 400 brand-name drugs in the 24 most-visited countries and yields the country-specific brand names under which common prescription and over-the-counter medications are sold.
- Medical Term/Condition Translation - captures idiomatic healthcare terms )"hay fever," "CAT scan") and critical healthcare phrases )"When can I travel?") in ten languages.
- City Health Profiles - convey critical information about healthcare services in hundreds of the world's most popular destinations: emergency numbers – local emergency numbers for ambulance, police and fire, emergency and urgent care options, vaccination requirements, local pharmacy practices and more.
- Security Profiles - contain up-to-date accounts of security risks for hundreds of frequently visited destinations outside the U.S. Topics include: terrorism, kidnapping, crime, political stability, reliability of local police and transportation, preferred lodging
- Featured Columns - authored by physicians on healthy travel tips.
Resolution:
Using the Gold Mobile platform and its web services API, HTH Worldwide implemented a new suite of mobile tools so that their traveling customers now get the information they need, when they need it, right to their phone called mPassport.
“All of the mPassport features were designed with the global traveler in mind,” said Andrew Orr, product manager for mPassport. “For more than ten years, we’ve been developing technologies to help business people, vacationers and students manage their health far from home. The Gold Mobile platform is high-performance, cutting-edge, and will accommodate our continually expanding database. The ingredients we provide makes mPassport the mobile way to trusted medical care, health and happiness. It’s the first of its kind.”
mPassport can be purchased online at mPassport.com. Pricing is subscription-based, and costs $9.95 for 30 days, $15.95 for 60 days, and $49.95 for a year.
