HOW IS MOTISPARK DIFFERENT:
Cultural Competency | Engagement | Usability | Motivation | Personalization
MotiSpark is a new kind of digital health tool that sends patients timely, personalized visual nudges to help them practice healthy choices and build intrinsic motivation.
Existing apps too often trigger shame, resulting in low engagement rates and unimproved outcomes. But, people love using MotiSpark because it makes them feel hopeful, in control and cared for.
HOW IS MOTISPARK DIFFERENT:
Cultural Competency | Engagement | Usability | Motivation | Personalization
A core part of MotiSpark’s mission is to scale culturally competent care to improve outcomes. One way we do this is by empowering local providers and community members to appear in their patient’s motivational videos - and we make it as easy to do as using Instagram. Provider groups can populate default choices in quizzes, like locally relevant food ideas & exercise programs.
MotiSpark:
Scales local demographically relevant providers & community members
MotiSpark is built to leverage local expert and community voices by enabling them to easily add content to the platform. According to diabetes educators at Clemson University, MotiSpark is the only digital health tool that they have tried that feels culturally appropriate. We are collaborating with Clemson now to address underserved adult diabetics with a virtual program with funding under the CARES Act. We are seeking to do another pilot for Spanish language diabetes support.
Existing Interventions:
Struggle to scale to diverse populations
For example, seasoned diabetes educators at Clemson University who have tried Noom’s diabetes program complained that it used coaches who lacked cultural understanding of the her predominantly Black patient population in South Carolina. The app suggested food items that aren’t sold in local stores in South Carolina. Notable exception to cultural incompetency is ConsejoSano who have taken great measures to understand and hire people from diverse populations.
HOW IS MOTISPARK DIFFERENT:
Cultural Competency | Engagement | Usability | Motivation | Personalization
MotiSpark 94% engagement after 3 months of use.
Existing app medium: 0% engagement after 6 days.
Existing digital health apps suffer from very low engagement rates (eg. 2/2020 study showed average engagement across 8 apps of only 5.5 days. ) If patients don’t use an app, it is not only ineffective, it’s not billable. And, paid cohort studies have made the problem of engagement difficult to see. For example, Pear Therapeutics reSET trial paid $400 to testers if they sustained engagement for 12 weeks. And, they admit… “the benefit of reSET without the use of contingency management incentives has not been evaluated.” Once out in the real world where patients are not being paid hundreds of dollars, engagement crashes. But, MotiSpark’s very different product shows consistently high engagement without paying patients.
Relevant research:
• Indicators of retention in remote digital health studies: a cross-study evaluation of 100,000 participants
• Readability of Patient Education Materials Available at the Point of Care
• Computer use, language, and literacy in safety net clinic communication
• What Is Form Abandonment and How Can You Avoid It?
HOW IS MOTISPARK DIFFERENT:
Cultural Competency | Engagement | Usability | Motivation | Personalization
VISUALS VS TEXT
Competitors require users to read and type in a lot of text.
MotiSpark uses video and visuals, bypassing literacy requirements.
TIMELY & shameless VS NOT TIMELY & difficult
Watch a personalized short video versus open an app, enter calories that make you feel guilty or try to articulate your mood…
MotiSpark sends delightful, surprising nudges when the people want them. Competitor apps depend on people to enter calories after eating or to think about their current mood and answer questions with no immediate reward.
SMS vs DOWNLOAD APP
Most competitor apps require app downloads. MotiSpark works through SMS or email with any browser. Onboarding is done via provider recommendation that does not take PII. No back-end integration required. Monthly de-identified reports sent.
Compare: anxiety coping strategy reinforcement
Compare: Healthy eating nudgeThe video above integrates multiple approaches, from visual priming, backward masking to cCBT reinforcement. User sees their selfie videos and photos and is reminded of their personal sense of purpose. Learn more.
Coach.me and Happify's TEXT based Mindfullness
HOW IS MOTISPARK DIFFERENT:
Cultural Competency | Engagement | Usability | Motivation | Personalization
Qualifying the effect on a patient’s self-perception is not a typical metric. But, to understand why MotiSpark has such a high engagement rate while existing digital health apps have very low ones, it’s worth reflecting on the app’s effects on self-perception.
MotiSpark makes people feel good by designing the experience to:
show them they are cared through empathetic video
help them feel more control in their lives by giving them choices in their behavioral plans
help them practice positive reframing & self-talk and see that they are part of groups of people that are like them. There is no ‘failing’ or red-x’s in MotiSpark.
Competitors apps make patients feel like they is something wrong with them and they are often failing. The interfaces may literally show broken-chains, red-x’s and downward spirals.
Tracking progress is the central user-experience in all but mindfulness digital health apps. MotiSpark believes the tracking paradigm does not work to help the vast majority of US patients and instead, triggers “what the hell” effect and shame. Trackers are great for reinforcing pride in already activated populations - but terrible for others.
HOW IS MOTISPARK DIFFERENT:
Cultural Competency | Engagement | Usability | Motivation | Personalization
Existing apps lack personalization: Patients may get personal attention from a coach, but this comes with a premium cost. And, the coaches are often not demographically appropriate.
MotiSpark has created a journey that gets the patients to choose when, what and how they will get their support. And, the personalization interactions leverage multiple evidence-based therapeutic interventions like cognitive behavioral therapy, positive reframing and motivational interviewing. We use visuals and whimsical content and keep it easy & fun to define personal goals, coping strategies and behavioral plans. People can add more to their MotiSpark anytime, but the system is designed to prompt adding personalized elements/learnings roughly 1x/week during sessions that only last a few minutes.
Visual multiple choices quizzes that help user identify things like their goals, coping strategies, healthy shelf-stable snacks, at-home exercises
User upload personal photos to identify supportive people and practices & enjoy seeing their uploads in their videos in always-new ways
User does ‘selfie therapy’ where they record themselves answering open-ended questions & enjoy seeing these videos in novel ways in future videos. Note testing & data show patients of all demographics will do this given proper explanation and privacy assurances.
