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Is Anonymity The Secret To Success For Consumer Health Apps?

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This article is more than 9 years old.

"Everyone has a chapter (or two) in their own life that they don't read aloud." Anon

The healing powers of anonymity are as old as the church confessional. Organizations like Alcoholics Anonymous (founded in 1935) are predicated on anonymity to help people with socially unacceptable addictions like alcohol, drugs and gambling. Telephone hotlines are also based on anonymity to help with things like suicide prevention. It's no real surprise then to see anonymity arrive in force as the latest wave of social media networks ‒ some of which have very tangible clinical benefits.

Two examples highlight the broad spectrum of opportunity that online anonymity provides ‒ and one has already begun the arduous journey of direct consumer revenue as a health service pure-play.

The first example is perhaps the best relative to investor appetite ‒ and controversy. The company (and app) is called Whisper ‒ and it's on the same trajectory as Twitter  and Facebook in the early days of their ascendancy. Like tweets, whispers also have a somewhat fixed format of about 200 characters, but the limitation has more to do with visual aesthetics on a mobile device than any technology. The text is then married to a background image which is user supplied or provided free by the service. The two are then combined to form one whisper. Any user can upvote, reply or direct message any whisper and (no surprise) the content is unfiltered and raw. Whispers are really only limited to what the human mind can imagine. The trajectory over the last 18 months has been meteoric.

  • Over 3.5 billion (yes ‒ billion) "whispers" viewed per month
  • 30 "whispers" are posted every second
  • Average time spent on Whisper ‒ 30 minutes per day
  • $54 Million in venture funding (over 3 rounds) in 11 months (April 2013 to March 2014)
  • Briefly experimented with charging (to post Whispers) which generated monthly revenue in six-figures

A more detailed review of the company, history and application included this assessment:

All together, the experience of spending time on Whisper is unlike any other major social network: It's more raw, more moving, more vulgar at times and yes, often more addictive. You can respond to posts you like with hearts, direct message users that peak your interest, share out posts on other networks or simply scroll through the endless whispers while slack-jawed and shifting between feelings of voyeurism, empathy and disgust. Seth Feigerman ‒ Mashable (here)

Like anonymous services that came before (and others that Whisper competes with directly today) some of the whispers have a very direct healthcare focus or backdrop.

In many ways, the success of Whisper can be attributed to identity-based channels like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn that have become so public and sanitized that frank personal health issues (or actual disclosures) are often limited ‒ if they're supported at all.

“The anonymous nature of Whisper creates an entirely different space for discussion, advice and support. Whisper allows users to share things they might not be comfortable sharing publicly or tied to a profile.  We see users sharing Whispers around health issues and diseases that affect them and their family members and getting real time feedback from the Whisper community, plus a reminder that they are not alone in dealing with these issues.” Michael Heyward, CEO and co-founder of Whisper

Part of the raw nature means that Whisper doesn't categorize the content (yet) and may never. There's no twitter hashtag equivalent ‒ and implementing that at this stage could thwart the organic (and exponential) growth. Some of the spectacle of the content is the very nature of it's wide-open (and raw) broadcast. Today, there are four core labels  ‒ Popular, Nearby, Latest and Featured  ‒ which are the only ways the company categorizes the rapidly growing stream.

On the clinical side are newer apps like First Derm and STD Triage which are companion apps from the same company ‒ iDoc24. Both apps are iOS based, anonymous and use a direct-to-consumer payment model (about $40 via iTunes or PayPal per case). The company started in 2008 with the anonymous STD Triage app and has received about $300k in "seed" stage funding to date (Crunchbase here). According to the company and relative to dermatology more generally;

  • About 20% of all family doctor visits are skin related
  • About 50% of all skin rashes disappear within a week (unnecessary clinical visits)
  • About 70% of skin problems can be treated with Over The Counter (OTC) medication
  • 80% search Google to find medical information
  • Dermatologists are relatively scarce (about 10,000) in the US

The company is not alone in the iPhone-based diagnostic category. CellScope secured a $1M seed-round (Crunchbase here) for a similar diagnostic device (also geared to anxious Mom's) that uses a proprietary smartphone attachment to image the ear canal for signs of infection. At this stage of their evolution, however, the consumer device is still pending release (and pricing).

Another service in the dermatology space is from Iagnosis, Inc. With about $10M in funding (Crunchbase here) the Iagnosis app ‒ DermatologistOnCall ‒ is available today, but only in select states (which doesn't include Arizona).

Neither CellScope nor Iagnosis appear to offer any anonymity for a consumer convenient pre-screening.

Which could well be the signaling behind the phenomenal success of Whisper. As consumers, we relish our privacy and convenience ‒ especially with sensitive aspects of our health. The technology is readily available to link consumers to providers for an initial ‒ and anonymous ‒ assessment. In many cases, that could well be all that's needed to determine immediacy around the next clinical step.

Consumer convenience tied closely with anonymity could also be a pivotal connection for the likelihood of any screening at all ‒ at least for some people and relative to specific health conditions. That's certainly the case for STD ‒ but is that really the only anonymous diagnostic opportunity? Like Whisper for anonymous chat ‒ you can agree with an anonymous diagnostic healthcare service or not. The fact is, the apps are coming. In the case of apps like Whisper and iDoc24 ‒ they're already here.