The healthcare industry is one of the world’s largest and fastest growing industries. And it’s defined as a sum of sectors that provide the goods and services to treat patients with care. Healthcare services are differentiated from other services in several aspects.
Technology has placed at the disposal of the healthcare community various potent tools to improve patient care. Virtual reality devices and apps help ease symptoms of depression and anxiety in older people and patients with mental illnesses and can also help people with their postoperative recovery process.
Health care spending has risen steadily in most countries, becoming a concern for decision-makers worldwide. Commentators often point to new medical technology as the key driver for burgeoning expenditures.
Walid Hallassou enjoys rich business insights and remarkable track record in the healthcare industry, thanks to 20 years of experience working in both the pharmaceutical and healthcare insurance and benefits management fields, with major emphasis on the design and implementation of solutions for the healthcare management sector in the Middle East & Africa.
Relevant Experience
Co Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Waltzing Elephant, a Holding company set-up to develop an electronic platform of multidisciplinary services to patients, medical and wellness service providers, insurers and distributors of medical products in the Middle East and North Africa.
General Manager of GlobeMed Lebanon, previously known as MedNet Liban, from 2012 till 2017, during which Walid grew the business exponentially and shifted the organization from a payer of care to a manager of care by introducing wellness, disease management and value based payment initiatives.
Project Manager, then Regional Vice President of GlobeMed Limited from 2001 till 2017, during which Walid played a vital role in setting up Third Party Administration companies in Côte d’Ivoire, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Bahrain and Jordan.
General Manager of GlobeMed Gulf FZ-LLC from 2007 till 2009, during which Walid led GlobeMed Gulf to be awarded the Health Management Company contract by the Dubai Health Authority to support the roll-out and management of Dubai’s new healthcare funding scheme.
Education
Executive MBA from ESA and ESCP-EAP
Bachelor of Pharmacy from the Lebanese American University
Bachelor of Biology from the American University of Beirut
Professional Memberships
Member of the Executive Committee of the Lebanese Healthcare Management Association (LHMA)
Member of the Lebanese Businessmen Association (RDCL)
Founding member of the Cercle des Dirigeants of ESA Business School
Knowing that much about Walid, it is important to note that Nicole is 360 Health and Wellness Platform. Nicole is an incentive-based health and wellness platform that aims to help insurance companies improve policyholder behavior and therefore technical results. Nicole offers a one-stop-shop co-branded, fully managed, health and wellness program that insurers can offer to their Groups, as well as their Individual (Medical and Life) clients.
BL: How do you explain your business career?
Walid Hallassou: I was the CEO of the GlobeMed Lebanon between January 2012 and December 2017 and I have worked in the GlobeMed Group for twenty years, since early 1999. So, my main experience is in healthcare insurance. Through these twenty years I have gathered a lot of experience and knowledge in healthcare, in insurance and in health insurance, and I have been exposed to all the intricacies of this industry, not only in Lebanon but also in the MENA region given that I was Project Manager and the Regional Vice President of the GlobeMed Group .
Thus, I worked in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, UAE, and many other countries where I set up the franchisees of GlobeMed . During all that time I was trying with the team to improve the way we do things; to expand regionally and try to innovate and create products that will benefit our clients insurers and their insured members. We have been very successful both in terms of growing the business in every country, in expanding regionally, and in always innovating with products and services.
One of the challenges that we faced and debated with our various clients was that managing health insurance is not only difficult, but was also becoming somehow impossible because of the exponential increase in medical cost. Normal medical inflation is there, but there are also additional aspects that are coming in to increase this medical cost in an exponential manner. One of them is the fact that people are aging, and thus living longer with their chronic diseases.
Second thing is that the technology that is entering the medical market is making every procedure or medication significantly more expensive than it was before. In insurance, usually, when we have expenses that are increasing insurance companies increase the premium in order to follow inflation and make sure that they are always getting enough premium to pay the claims. But when the medical claims are growing exponentially, companies cannot increase the premium exponentially because people are not going to afford their medical insurance policies anymore. So this is where this imbalance started and this is where at one point in time it becomes uncontrollable.
After long research, conferences and discussions with experts from around the globe, I realized that the world of healthcare insurance was facing similar issues, but that they had also started to shift the way they do things: from the traditional cost containment (controlling bills and negotiating tariffs with providers) to prevention and care management (trying to prevent people from getting sick, and helping sick ones live better). So the trend around the world now is not to wait until someone gets sick in order to use the premium to pay their expenses, but to use this premium smartly to help them stay healthy. Therefore, the less they get admitted to the hospital, the less they are going to cost the medical insurance, the healthier they are going to be, and the better and longer their relationship with the insurance companies will be.
It is better for the insurers, the insured members and for the healthcare system in general. This is what drove me to push this strategy within GlobeMed, to convert from claims reimbursement to care management, and to eventually consider spinning off into a smaller and more agile setup, benefit from this change of mindset throughout the world, and try to build within our region something that resembles what is being done outside. Hence, I left GlobeMed and I started a project with a friend of mine, Paul Jazzar – one of the most brilliant technologist in the region who has more than 18 years of experience building software product companies – and we are developing a health and wellness platform that we would like to offer to insurance companies, corporations and individuals; the platform includes incentive-based wellness, prevention, screening and disease management programs managed by technology and clinicians working hand in hand.
BL: Why Nicole? And what is the Nicole platform made of?
Walid Hallassou: We called this platform “Nicole” because we wanted to personify the offering: Nicole would be your companion or your health advisor.
For it to be operational, efficient and effective, the platform includes many components: the programs, the incentives, the clinical support and the technology including the connected devices..
Under programs we have Basic Wellness, Diabetes Disease Management, Mindfulness, Pharmacy Pill-Packs, etc. Every one of these programs is designed to run through a 12 months calendar year (in line with the insurance policy duration) and include pre-defined tasks and milestones to be completed at pre-determined times of the policy period; these could be a visit to the family doctor, the filling of a wellness questionnaire, the administration of a vaccination, or a screening diagnostic test, etc.
Every time one of these tasks is completed, the member earns points and every a milestone is achieved the member is rewarded with gifts. We are doing this because we have learned that all over the world and especially in our part of the world, people are not motivated to take action because they were made aware or just by getting enrolled in similar programs, but they need to be incentivized to do the right things. So, we integrated an incentive program onto the platform similar to loyalty programs used by airline companies or credit cards; if the client goes to see the doctor on time, fills his questionnaire, takes the flu shot, or manages to decrease his HbA1c (the main indicator for diabetes), Nicole is going to reward his/her with points and gifts. Gifts can be redeemed via vouchers, and points can be converted into some sort of premium discount at renewal.
The programs are designed by medical professionals and inspired from international guidelines , are delivered by a network of well selected contracted clinicians, and are managed and supported by an experienced medical call center team.
All of the above is delivered through a technology platform including a CRM, a loyalty management system, and of course what is visible to the end-user: the companion app, Nicole. This app is what accompanies the members all the time, showing them the programs they are enrolled in, the tasks to be done, what has been completed, the progress made, the wellness score, the points collected, the rewards earned, etc. It also includes a chatting function to communicate with the wellness coaches.
BL: Where are you now in the development and commercialization of Nicole?
Walid Hallassou: Now, it has been two years that we have been building and testing, and we can safely now say that we have a product that is ready for launch.
I am also happy to say that the tests we have done till date showed very promising results. We have two case studies that we are also showcasing, one of them is with a group that has taken the basic wellness program and we have seen how the employees have changed the way they behave with their eating habits. Some of them have stopped smoking, some have lost weight, and some of them were even sent for psychological support (because in some organizations there is much more stress than others). There is another organization that has tried the diabetes disease management program and we have seen great outcomes relating to drops in HbA1c, hospital admissions, ER visits, etc.
We have also started testing with corporate challenges using Fitbit devices, steps team competitions and leaderboards to motivate usually sedentary desktop employees to be more active by moving around the office, taking the stairs, etc.
BL: What is the number of your customers until now?
Walid Hallassou: The idea of Nicole started two years ago, during which we were building the product, the network, the partnerships, and of course testing and piloting. but had not started any commercial effort. We now have around 500 users on the platform, which are mainly friends and family that were interested to be with us form the beginning and help us test and grow the product, the functionalities and the services.
We shall be commercializing in 2020, and we already have interest from a number of insurance companies in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, with whom we are launching company-specific pilots in Q1 of this year.
BL: What are the difficulties or obstacles that you faced in finalizing your Nicole concept?
Walid Hallassou: The Nicole concept is a combination of many components, so we had to be able to create and bring together all of these components in a harmonious way. The programs require medical expertise; so we needed to find the right partners enabling us to create the right programs, programs that are sound, viable and professionally accepted.
Incentivizing people and creating rewards in order to push them to do the right things, because they will not do that if they are not pushed/incentivized, that is another component. We need to find a partner that understands what pushes people to do the right thing. And here behavioral economics come into play and we have therefore opted to have a psychologist as one of our advisors on the project.
Service level is another challenge; so choosing the right network of providers that will deliver the service and interact with end-users on aspects that are intimate such as lifestyles, also took time.
But in addition to all of the above, the most challenging is may be going to an insurance company and be able to convince them that they need to invest in the health of people on the short term to see better technical profits in the long term; we all know that if you start pushing people to stay healthy it is not that tomorrow morning their medical bills are going to drop; we are pushing for a lifestyle change, and that takes time and effort. But a combination of long term vision with respect to profitability from some insurers, and the belief that constant engagement with customers builds loyalty and therefore customer retention from others make me optimistic in our industry and in the ability of Nicole to make a breakthrough.
BL: Who is your competitor in the region or in Lebanon?
Walid Hallassou: We do not have any competitor in the region, yet!.
Competition is always healthy and when you create something and people follow you, it also means that you are doing the right thing. So, we are hoping that we are going to get competitors. Both to prove that we are doing the right thing, and to push us to continue doing the right things.
But, again, what we are trying to do is not something that does not exist around the world. In the region, there is nobody doing this. But in South Africa, England, the US to name a few, there are a lot of organizations that have started doing things that are similar. What we have done in Nicole is that we have taken ideas from these organizations and we have localized them to our market. Some of the organizations we were inspired by rely purely on technology, so there is only an app and it takes your steps, gives you alerts, reminds you of things. And there are other organizations that only rely purely on the doctor calls and reminds you and ask you to come and see him, etc.
We think that technology, alone, does not work in in the region right now because people are still not very much relying on technology (especially in healthcare), and the exclusive of doctors and nurses physically is very costly. So what we have done in Nicole is we have brought them together and we have used a well balanced mix in order to make sure that our offering is not prohibitive in terms of cost while always making sure there is a human element helping the technology accompany the changes in behavior.
BL: Who are your shareholders? Are they from the region or Lebanese?
Walid Hallassou: For the time being, it is Paul and myself. We have created this start-up and its beautiful product, as well as initiated the first pilots from our money.
We shall be raising funds for Nicole in the next phase, and already have serious interest from a number of potential investors. We have individuals and institutions. The individuals are from Lebanon, the Gulf and the US. And the institution is a regional player.
BL: Is the present economic situation an obstacle to Nicole?
Walid Hallassou: Until today, it has not because Nicole is a start-up that was mainly focused on building its product. When you are building, you are not affected by what is happening outside; but if you are selling, you start getting affected by crises such as the one Lebanon is going through.
Now that we are ready to commercialize, we will definitely feel the pressure of the crisis in Lebanon, and that is why we have quickly started knocking on the doors of our friends in the Gulf.
BL: Do you think Nicole has a role to play in this crisis?
Walid Hallassou: Definitely. Nicole’s objectives are to help insurance companies improve profitability, offer more affordable products and retain customers. And that is exactly what insurance companies should be striving for in an economic crisis like the one we are witnessing now. Nicole also wants to put technology at the disposal of insured members, allowing them to have inexpensive and hassle-free access to health and wellness coaches, helping them to improve their lifestyles and tailoring them to their specific medical and general economic environments.
