Using Predictive Analytics to Live Better Lives

When Vic Strecher heard reports of veterans returning from the Gulf War suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression—with some turning to suicide—he knew he had to help.

Strecher, a professor and director of innovation at the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health, thought that these veterans—and really everyone—could benefit from taking better control over their own health. And to do that, Strecher thought they needed access to all kinds of data to help them make better decisions. 

Strecher launched JOOL Health to help employers, health plans, and health systems improve their populations’ overall well-being through linking smarter and more targeted use of data and the emerging “science of purpose.” JOOL’s platform would use predictive analytics to measure everything from sleeping and eating habits to less tangible things like a person’s creativity and presence.

At the same time, external data points on things like the weather and temporal data would be utilized to drive suggestions on things users can do to feel better and align with their sense of purpose, acting as a “motivational touchstone.”

Strecher and the JOOL team had a lot of experience building compelling user interfaces. But an analytics platform that could enable connections between personal inputs and external factors, as well as a technological infrastructure that would support hundreds of thousands of users—that was another matter entirely.

Booz Allen became a strategic partner with JOOL Health to help it realize this vision and pioneer the category of Precision Well-being™.

“A vast majority of corporations would have shied away from taking on the challenges that come with this type of project,” Vic says. “From pulling in data from multiple sources to dealing with privacy concerns, Booz Allen’s experience was crucial to our partnership and together we were able to develop a groundbreaking product.” 

Our data scientists and technologists worked alongside JOOL’s team to develop a mobile and web application that helps users:

• Better understand how behavioral factors (such as sleep, mindfulness, physical activity, and diet), temporal factors (such as day of the week), and environmental factors (such as location-based temperature, cloud cover, humidity, gas prices) influence daily vitality (energy) and self-control (willpower).
  
• Learn how to make changes in the behavioral factors that matter most to the individual. The aim is to improve personal productivity, performance, and well-being.
  

Throughout development, our data scientists designed ways to adapt mathematical and predictive models to deliver intelligent and impactful insights and guidance to help individuals be their best self. The result is a product that builds a personal model of the individual user that gets smarter the more it’s used, unlike traditional population models. Booz Allen created with JOOL a next generation well-being platform—one that uses the same approach used in precision medicine.

“We wanted to build an engine that continually learned about the user, and continued to improve its advice—a kind of digital life coach. But we needed help in building the engine,” says Vic. “Booz Allen knew how to build the engine.”