Swiss health insurer Sanagate AG and Dacadoo, a digital healthcare startup, have launched an app called SanaHealth. Although there are several similar health apps already available on the Swiss App store, this offering from Sanagate has a number of unique features thanks to its partnership with SanaHealth.
Firstly, the app measures all aspects of a person’s health and provides a health score which is coupled with a realtime ‘health coach’ that helps users with the following:
- Calculates the calories and steps, but also factors in users lifestyles, such as eating and sleeping. It then offers personalised coaching messages to keep the user on track with his/her personal health goals.
- Integration with several wearables and other apps related activity trackers (Fitbit, Jawbone, etc), activity apps (Runkeeper, etc), digital scales (Fitbit, etc), other machines like heart belts, digital blood pressure measuring devices, etc.
- Provides personalised encouraging messages from the “Health Coach” to remind users of exercise commitments and current health metrics.
Digital health engagement app encouraging customers to improve their health by developing healthier lifestyle behaviors.
Antonia Lepore, head of marketing and services at Sangate has summarized Sanagate’s philosophy with regard to digital health: “This innovative app adds to Sanagate’s digital insurance strategy to provide customers with easy-to-use mobile tools to manage all aspects of their health insurance”.
Ultimately, this initiative by Sanagate underscores the need for legacy health insurers to provide health/wellness solutions to augment their product line. Although it’s difficult for traditional insurers to offer all the features that venture backed digital health startups can develop, partnerships such as Sangate/Dacadoo can enable traditional insurers to compete with purely digital competitors.
