The Silicon Review - Best Business Review Magazine 50 Most Trustworthy Companies 2019 | Page 88

Helping You Manage Your Own
Health: ConnectWell
Andrea Bloom
Founder & CEO
A Brief Background on
the Healthcare Leader
Andrea Bloom is the
Founder & CEO of
ConnectWell and guides the
company in being a trusted,
comprehensive source of
digital content to empower
people in managing their health
and well-being. Andrea is a
seasoned healthcare executive
and entrepreneur with 25
years of experience in product
development, marketing,
international strategy, business
development, and consulting
roles. Prior to founding
ConnectWell, Andrea worked for
leading healthcare companies
(Johnson & Johnson, Roche),
medical device start-ups
(Metrika, iCare, Calibra Medical)
and health-related nonprofits
(Institute for the Future,
Juvenile Diabetes Research
Foundation, American Heart
Association, Diabetic Youth
Foundation, and Institute for
Responsible Nutrition). Andrea
received a BA in Economics
from the University of
California, Berkeley and an MBA
from Harvard Business School.
“We transform the most trusted source of health and wellness information
into an engaging digital consumer format and make it available to our
partners for use with their populations.”
S
ome of the most important
aspects of healthcare are
wellness, prevention, and chronic
disease management. It is important
for everyone to work consciously on
maintaining their health, yet most
people don’t know the intricacies
of wellness, healthy lifestyle habits,
disease prevention, and chronic
disease management. Because our
health system is not geared toward
educating people on the important
aspects of maintaining their health
and managing their chronic conditions,
people tend to go to the Internet for
information. This is problematic as
the Internet is full of unsubstantiated
findings or misinformation that can
lead people down the wrong path and
can affect whether people decide to
see a doctor, which one they see, and
what other interventions they might
pursue to protect their health. This
is why it is so important for people
to have digital access to a trusted
source of health and wellness
information that is expertly vetted,
comprehensive, and current.
ConnectWell is a leading-edge provider
of digital health and wellness content
that is academically sourced and
designed for a consumer audience
to engage people in their total health
and well-being including: disease
management, disease prevention,
and the adoption of healthy lifestyle
habits. Many of the most common
chronic conditions such as diabetes,
hypertension, high cholesterol,
heart disease and obesity are caused
not by viruses, bacteria or physical
contact with people, but by unhealthy
lifestyles. ConnectWell’s suite of
health and wellness content provides
comprehensive education on managing
a wide range of diseases and lifestyle
habits that help in treating those
conditions and in helping people
maintain their overall health.
In Conversation with
the Founder and CEO
of Connectwell, Andrea
Bloom
What was the motivation to
launch ConnectWell?
ConnectWell was founded to provide
an add-on service to complement
healthcare benefits so that employees
could engage in healthy lifestyle
practices to manage and improve their
own health and well-being. Access
to healthcare benefits and doctor
visits are not enough by themselves
to keep people healthy. The ten-plus
years I spent in the diabetes device
industry left a profound impact on
me. Disease management practices
for people with Type 2 diabetes
are very similar to healthy lifestyle