New Healthy Living Referral Website Offers First Online Marketing Support for Bay Area Healing and Wellness Businesses
Local leaders launch Heallio, a “Health Living Network” to improve competitive edge for businesses disadvantaged by conventional system and unlikely to benefit from health care reform legislation.
San Francisco, Calif. (Vocus) January 22, 2010
In response to health care reform legislation that doesn’t promise much support for Bay Area health and wellness businesses that serve outside traditional insurance networks, a group of local business leaders today launched a new online “healthy living network” referral service to give them greater marketing power.
Heallio (http://www. heallio. com) is a content-rich, interactive website that provides Bay Area consumers a single platform for multiple wellness resources, including a directory of local business and health practitioners selected for their quality reputations, particularly those with a holistic and integrative approach. The website supports its health network of professionals by connecting them with potential customers, who also have access on the site to an array of resources to help shape their wellness goals and health and healing decisions.
Heallio gives Bay Area integrative health and wellness businesses and practitioners, which often are not part of insurance networks, two affordable marketing solutions. The Premium Partners program gives members free access to a wellness-focused direct marketing platform, posting of discount coupons and hosting of their professional profiles on Heallio. Client Connect is a pay-per-lead generation program that provides members with the contact information of Heallio customers who have requested a member’s service through the Heallio HealthMatch system.
The brainchild of five Bay Area health, technology, and business leaders and privately funded, Heallio launched this week with a campaign to create widespread awareness for the new website through Facebook (http://www. facebook. com/heallio) and Twitter (http://www. twitter. com/heallio) and by offering the first edition of the Heallio newsletter to practitioners to learn about the network. For copies of the free newsletter, practitioners can become Facebook fans, direct message to @heallio on Twitter or email info(at)heallio(dot)com.
“One way to reform health care is to encourage wellness as a lifestyle that supports healthy workers, families, and neighborhoods,” said Dr. Bradley Jacobs, chief executive officer and founding medical director and endowed chair of the UCSF Osher Center for Integrative Medicine. (http://www. osher. ucsf. edu/) “Through Heallio, we aim to create awareness for a broader scope of wellness choices with an emphasis on integrative and alternative healing, informing those choices with expert information and timely news, and making it all easily accessible in a resource that invites daily interaction.” Heallio currently includes 100 practitioners and 120 businesses that extend from San Jose to Santa Rosa, from as far west as Pt Reyes to Walnut Creek.
Business Supporting Business
For local organizations that support progressive employee wellness programs, Heallio offers a convenient way to include The Healthy Living Network in their benefits packages and make services outside traditional insurance coverage more accessible and cost effective for their employees.
“The Bay Area is home to many large companies that strive through philanthropic and volunteer programs to connect with local communities and neighborhoods,” said Dr. Kenneth R. Pelletier, senior vice president of Heallio, clinical professor of medicine at the University of Arizona (http://www. medicine. arizona. edu/) and UCSF Schools of Medicine (http://medschool2.ucsf. edu/). “Heallio gives them a way to deepen that commitment by supporting local practitioners and small businesses that are part of the local Heallio health professional network, while making it easier for their employees to locate the wellness support they need.”
Health Network of Professionals
Heallio’s health professional network, unlike traditional medical referral directories, is built on the referrals of the Heallio Council of Healers (http://heallio. com/info/healers), a group of highly regarded Bay Area health professionals who invite practitioners they respect to join the network and list their profiles. Responding to consumer inquiries sent to them from the Heallio website, practitioners can personally contact them to discuss relevant health services in the convenience and privacy of their homes.
Heallio is working with five strategic partners to promote the network; they include:
The Symptom Management Service at the UCSF/Mount Zion Cancer Center The Institute for Health and Healing at California Pacific Medical Center The American College of Traditional Chinese Medicine The Institute of Noetic Sciences
About the Founders
Dr. Bradley Jacobs, founding medical director and endowed chair of the UCSF Osher Center for Integrative Medicine and co-author of "The American College of Physicians Evidence-Based Guide to Complementary and Alternative Medicine." (https://http://www. acponline. org/atpro/timssnet/products/tnt_products. cfm? action=long&primary_id=330381000) Ken Corr, chief executive officer, technology, media and education executive who has worked with LucasLearning/Lucasfilm Ltd, IBM, Stanford, Harvard, PBS, SONY, Ken Burns, Sundance Institute, Robert Redford, Disney, CBS, National Geographic, and California Pacific Medical George Zimmer, founder and CEO of Men’s Warehouse, largest retailer of men’s apparel and tuxedo rentals in North American and consistently listed as Fortune Top 100 best companies to work for in the U. S. Dr. Marilyn Schlitz, CEO and president of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, medical anthropologist and researchers, author of peer-reviewed publications and “Living Deeply, the Science of Transformation in Daily Life,” (http://www. noetic. org/noeticbooks/livingdeeply. cfm) and “Conscious and Healing: Integral Approaches to Mind-Body Medicine.” (http://www. noetic. org/research/ch_book/main. html) Chris Hemmeter, Enterprise development, financing and operations in hospitality/information technology. General Partner of Quest Hospitality Ventures, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of iCare Marketing, Inc. and E&O Development, Inc. Harvard Business School Baker Scholar.
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