\n
![](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rsoftsolution.com\/blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/RSSPoster_PRO\/cache\/23b25_p1030024.jpg?w=640&ssl=1\")
<\/p>\n
\n<\/p>\n
As\u00a0Jawbone continues to work towards a pivot<\/a>, the Up device maker also continues to talent\u00a0that\u00a0may not be core to its\u00a0future. In the latest departure, Kelvin Kwong, who had been the Jawbone\u2019s\u00a0director of product management, has joined Big Health<\/a>, maker of the Sleepio<\/a> sleep improvement program, as VP of product management. Alongside that, Dr Jenna Carl is now the startup\u2019s medical director.<\/p>\n The additions come on the heels of\u00a0Big Health raising $12 million<\/a> last year from a notable list of investors that included strategic backer\u00a0Kaiser Permanente. It\u2019s been primarily selling its product through to businesses or health services aggregators to offer on to employees, and says that there are some 800,000 workers now able to use Sleepio. (Customers include\u00a0Comcast, LinkedIn, Boston Medical Center and the Henry Ford Health System.)<\/p>\n Big Health is coming at the health and wellness industry, and combatting specific disorders, by bypassing drugs and instead looking\u00a0for cures through\u00a0behavioral changes.<\/p>\n It\u2019s\u00a0a disruptive approach. Taking just the sleep industry, there is a whole section\u00a0of the pharmaceutical world dedicated to sleep medication \u2014 approaching $12 billion by 2021<\/a> and worth around $10 billion today, by one estimate. But Big Health\u2019s approach with its first product, Sleepio, is to use a form of cognitive behavioural therapy<\/a> (CBT), delivered by way of an\u00a0app, to steer people to more sleep-filled nights.<\/p>\n This is where the two new hires will\u00a0fit for the startup. Kwong\u2019s role at Big Health will be to help the company not just fine tune existing product Sleepio, but also look at what other mental health issues\u00a0Big Health might next\u00a0tackle using its app-based approach, and how. The \u201chow\u201d is a big thing, since some argue that CBT and other therapies like it only work through persistent, live sessions. Big Health believes it has found a way to democratize that and make it more widely available.<\/p>\n Behavioral science has been around for a while now, but it\u2019s largely been used for commercial and business purposes. It has helped, for example, supermarket owners understand\u00a0where best to stock things on shelves, and\u00a0online stores when\u00a0to recommend certain products. \u201cThe\u00a0last three decades we\u2019ve learned a lot about how and why consumers\u00a0do things, but\u00a0<\/span>those who have made best use of that data are retailers,\u201d Kwong said. \u201cThat is all <\/span>UI design. But in the last five years, we have started to use the same understanding to help us with\u00a0our own lives, how to live more healthily, use less energy and so on.\u00a0Big Health<\/span>\u00a0is an amazing platform to do just that.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n This would be an interesting progression from what Kwong did at Jawbone, where his role was to \u201cdrive behavior change\u201d \u2014 in other words, how to position the startup\u2019s products not just as health tracking gadgets but how help consumers understand\u00a0the wider benefits of using them, and conversely how to use that to better shape the development of the products themselves.<\/p>\n But considering\u00a0our report last week about Jawbone\u2019s shift to a clinical market<\/a>, it makes some sense that Kwong would leave, as the wider focus on consumers would be removed in place of a more targeted enterprise strategy, where clinicians might be prescribing use of wearable devices, rather than consumers having to come to the conclusion that wearables are essential.<\/p>\n Dr Carl, meanwhile, will be bringing more medical and clinical experience to the team, after nine years of working in the field and training at UCSF, Harvard Medical School\/Mass General Hospital, and the VA Palo Alto Health Care System, as well as\u00a0doctoral training in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Boston University \u2014 one of the leaders in developing empirically supported treatments<\/a>\u00a0for mental health, which sits alongside CBT as a route for using less or no drugs to solve certain issues.<\/p>\n \u201cDr. Carl\u2019s background in developing evidence-based cognitive and behavioral therapies makes her a phenomenal asset to the Big Health team,\u201d said CEO Peter Hames, who co-founded the company with sleep therapist Colin Espie after Haims used a self-help book by Espie to cure his insomnia and believed the book could be turned into a bigger business. Hames had been leading product prior to Kwong taking on the new role.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Article source: http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/techcrunchIt\/~3\/X4g9BvZ3UCU\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As\u00a0Jawbone continues to work towards a pivot, the Up device maker also continues to talent\u00a0that\u00a0may not be core to its\u00a0future. In the latest departure, Kelvin Kwong, who had been the <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[19],"tags":[25],"class_list":["post-3409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-enterprise-software","tag-enterprise"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t