A regular reader of this blog wrote asking me about how I write, inquiring about how much time I invest in developing an outline for each piece, how I decide on a topic for the piece, and how long it takes to write.

I am afraid my answers disappointed her. I replied I am the kind of person who likes the beach because it is so close to the ocean. I never use an outline, I rarely have a topic in mind until I am well into the piece, and each piece usually takes twenty to thirty minutes to write. Maybe I’d be a better writer if I did those things, but patience has never been a strength of mine.

January 11, 2016 USA Today. Ford is making a big push to get intimately involved with the daily mobility needs of all motorists, regardless of whether they own a Ford automobile.

Why is that statement so important to healthcare? I’ll write, you read, and we will come back to that question in a bit.

I spent a few hours trying to buy something over the weekend. My perspective on shopping is simple—if it can be bought, it can be found on Google and purchased online.

My efforts this weekend changed my perspective. What I wanted to buy, what I had looked high and low for, does not exist online. While that may not seem to be a big deal, it should be if you are interested in healthcare, the Affordable Care Act, population health, or your own health.

I wanted to see how easy it was to purchase services, or a program related to health. My health. My wellness.

I Googled ‘buy’ and ‘purchase,’ and ‘health’ and ‘wellness.’ Other than a multitude of hits about whether I want to purchase insurance and nutrition products, and a recommendation to add the term ‘care’ to my search, I did not find anything.

So every healthcare executive in American, both private and public, believes we must recast healthcare to a model focused on prevention on wellness and on health management. Do that and everyone wins.

The downside with that model, and it is a big one, is that nobody has figured out how to package, market and sell those services, and in turn, nobody can buy those services. It is a little like selling tourist travel to Mars. Nobody is selling it because they cannot deliver it, and in turn, nobody can buy it.

Once you have their minds, their wallets will follow. Suppose the average consumer spends ten hours on the phone dealing with your health system. That same person currently spends between 900-1,000 hours a year interacting with their mobile devices. What if your system could be part of those hours? What if you could make the user experience very good and very effective? Wouldn’t that help your brand? Wouldn’t that help make your patients feel more valued?

A handy health assistant living right in your pocket or on your wrist. It could even be tied to reward-based programs with partner companies.

We want to manage the health of the population, and we want to pitch wellness. And it sounds like many people would line up to buy that service. Like going to Mars, it is a great idea. Unfortunately, nobody is building the health and wellness rocket ship.

Back to the article in USA Today about Ford and their app. To me, the most important feature about what Ford is launching is that people do not have to be a Ford customer to benefit from the app.

People do not have to be a Ford customer to benefit from their personal assistant app.

What if the statement read, “People do not have to be a patient of the Cleveland Clinic (or a customer of Anthem or Walmart) to benefit from our personal healthcare assistant app?”

And what do we call those people? Consumers. Prospective patients. The same people your marketing group is spending millions of dollars to turn them into patients.

Might a healthcare personal assistant that benefited patients and consumers be of more value than just another billboard showing a group photo of your urology group?

The best way to drive value is to offer value, to give people something to make their lives better. Give them a solution to a problem they did not know they had.

The way to offer preventive care, to help people habitually manage their health and wellness, is to design and package a solution. Executives are looking at a whole new way to approach healthcare. They cannot manage care with tools and processes designed to provide care.

Start over. Simplify. Perfect. If you were serious about offering proactive care and wellness, wouldn’t it make sense to design an offering?

For those who read this far and are wondering why healthcare needs to use an app from FORD, I may not be able to give you the help you need.