Cello Health Apps Promise Richer Feedback

Cello's Health Insight division has launched two new mobile apps designed to provide richer, more relevant quant and qual data. Respondents including patients, healthcare professionals, payors and pharma field forces can include images and record videos as part of their feedback.

Both apps are available for Android and iOS platforms. The eVillage builds on the company's community platform of the same name, enabling the collection of qual data via discussion forums, quick polls and private diaries; while the Cello Health app, developed in association with mobile research tech firm Lumi, combines the collection of more standard quant information alongside rich media and, if required, geolocation data.

Cello Health was created in March, by bringing together the group's five health-related businesses under one brand. Last month, the division launched a therapy-based forecasting product called FutureScope.

The division's director of digital innovation Dave Bostock says the latest additions tap into the massive growth of mobile usage and its potential for richer information: 'Not only does interacting with a research project instantaneously enable the researcher to find out how the respondent really feels, the use of mobile apps taps into a whole new, richer source of responses, including uploaded video and images as well as text.' He adds: 'Our own studies have shown that this data tends to be more accurate, as it avoids some of the inevitable skewing caused by the more traditional route of asking for remembered experiences...' Bostock says fifteen per cent of eVillage community members already access the platform via mobile, making the app launch 'the logical next step'.

Web site: www.cellohealth.com .