Kong Fei, CEO of Miao Health: User Adherence Is the Biggest Challenge in Health Management — Gamification Drives Continuous Product Engagement | Future Healthcare 100 Summit 2017

“2017 Top 100 Future Healthcare Companies” Forum, themed “The Era of Species Explosion,” was held at the Beijing Marriott Hotel from December 15 to 17, 2017.

On the afternoon of December 16, at the parallel forum on health management, Kong Fei, CEO of Beijing Miaoyijia Information Technology Co., Ltd., delivered a speech titled “Games Improve Health, Health Changes the World.”VCBeat (WeChat: vcbeat)The guest's viewpoints have been summarized.

Kong Fei, CEO of Beijing Miaoyijia Information Technology Co., Ltd.

Kong Fei holds a Master’s degree in Management Science and Engineering from Wuhan University of Technology. With over ten years of experience in the internet and smart hardware industries, he previously served as a senior executive at China’s largest mobile software and complete device solution design company. He later became President of a well-known domestic game company listed on NASDAQ, where he led teams to develop several online games with concurrent user bases exceeding 100,000 and pioneered the earliest smart TV gaming platform. In 2014, he joined Beijing Miaoyijia Information Technology Co., Ltd. as CEO.

I transitioned into the health management industry from a different field, having spent many years in the gaming industry.

What Is the Most Challenging Aspect of Health Management? The greatest challenge lies not in acquiring user health metrics, but in subsequent interventions. Whether prescribed by physicians or health managers, many patients forget their care plans once they leave the hospital. For instance, while doctors may advise increased water intake and adequate rest, patients often remember only to take their medications on time. This makes adherence to health management regimens even more difficult.

In contrast, video games are entirely different; Tencent even launched an “anti-addiction system” due to the excessive player compliance with Honor of Kings.

Miao Health has over 30 million users. When segmented by age, the user base includes individuals born in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Notably, those aged 25 to 45 account for more than 70% of the total.

Many people play games purely for entertainment, meaning they do not make any in-game purchases; however, as time has progressed,We will find that, in fact, it is not only consumer habits that have changed, but also the demographic of paying customers.By 2017, individuals born in the 1970s were approximately 47 years old, those born in the 1980s were around 37, and those born in the 1990s were about 27.

To implement gamified health management, it is essential to tailor strategies to users’ diverse preferences and existing habits, aligning with or adapting to their routines rather than prescribing presumptive solutions. While proposing a solution is straightforward, ensuring user adherence remains exceptionally challenging—a persistent obstacle in the field.

Traditional Health Management 1.0, in simple terms, is merely at the stage of health education. What Miao Health is doing is transforming this traditional health management system, ushering it into a more intelligent era of Health Management 2.0.Reflect on our own rebellious tendencies during our school years: when parents and teachers continually preached about what constituted correct behavior, did we comply? This is precisely why health management is so challenging.

Gaming habits include staying up late, getting excited, and being persistent. Of course, gaming also has its benefits—such as a sense of fulfillment. Things unattainable in real life can be achieved in games, such as becoming a king, which in turn brings a sense of happiness.

Many insights from the book *Reality Is Broken* are worth drawing on for entrepreneurs in the health management industry. Gamified operations have several key characteristics:

First, the voluntary nature of participation in games. No one is forcing you to play video games, yet countless people are playing them;

Second, Feedback System。Rewards are granted immediately upon completing a level;

Third, Clear Rules. How to pass the levels and how to obtain rewards, with clear reward rules;

Fourth, gamification mechanisms.Gaming is the most profitable sector in today’s mobile internet industry, a success closely tied to its robust gamification mechanisms.

Health management is often perceived as dull and tedious by most users, making it difficult for many to maintain long-term adherence.Miao Health innovatively integrates gamification elements such as “leveling systems,” “task collection,” and “instant feedback” into health management to effectively stimulate user engagement. Through gamified operations, it enables users to easily overcome inertia and improve their health while enjoying the process.

The gamified operations of More Health are mainly divided into:

Gamified Tasks,Attract users through entertaining presentation. While users enjoy a relaxed and fun experience, they are motivated to complete tasks, thereby also accomplishing health management objectives.

Gamified activities,Boost user engagement and increase user retention. Present health management in the form of activities to provide users with a sense of honor, achievement, and tangible rewards;

Gamified Interaction,Leverage gamified interactions to enhance user affinity, boost user stickiness, and increase users’ willingness to share.

Through gamification, Miaojiankang now boasts significantly higher user engagement metrics than apps focused on medical consultations and appointment registration.

Regarding gamified operations, Miao Health offers solutions for both B2B and B2C markets. Taking hypertension management as an example, blood pressure monitoring is not the ultimate goal. We have developed a block-stacking mini-game where irregularly shaped blocks fall when a user’s blood pressure is high, whereas normally shaped blocks appear when readings are within the normal range. This approach incorporates competitive mechanics through the block-building gameplay.

There are several key points here: First, transform the tedious task of blood pressure measurement into a block-stacking game. Second, change habits over time; simply reminding users to measure their blood pressure daily is unlikely to establish good habits. However, the block-stacking approach works in reverse: as users participate consecutively, the tower grows higher. Having invested effort, they become more reluctant to let it fall. In this way, habits are reinforced through reverse accumulation over time. This is one of the solutions proposed by our team.

When Miao Health first started, it launched an initiative internally known as [Miao+], designed to connect smart wearable devices.Through [Miao+], we can instantly track users' health behaviors and understand the implementation status of their health plans.

On the [Miao+] platform, Miao Health has undertaken a complex yet essential task. For an app that needs to integrate with multiple smart devices, each additional device integration typically adds several megabytes of data. If hundreds of devices are integrated, the cumulative size could reach hundreds of megabytes. No app can reasonably accommodate an installation package of such magnitude.[Miao+] Through continuous optimization, we have ultimately developed a standard SDK interface with a size of only around 300KB, providing smart device data access services for various apps.

To date, Miao+ has integrated data from over 300 smart wearable devices across 17 categories, including smart bands, blood pressure monitors, glucometers, body fat scales, thermometers, and fetal heart rate monitors. Additionally, it incorporates various health-related data such as physical examination records and insurance data, enabling comprehensive health data monitoring and management for users.

By integrating IoT technology with smart hardware, Miao Jiankang has built a comprehensive intelligent personal health data center. This platform encompasses various health data entry points, including medical healthcare, fitness and wellness, medical rehabilitation, and behavioral analysis, thereby synchronizing users’ offline health data to online platforms. Through the [Miao+] AI cloud platform, it provides integrated interpretation of multi-dimensional health data, offering health data management services to industries such as insurance, medical check-up providers, and elderly care institutions, as well as to individual users. Additionally, it supplies data support for the gamified operation of health management.

【Miao+】Platform’s Partial Partners

Currently, Miao Health’s partners include Huawei Mobile, China Unicom, Sunshine Insurance, and ZhongAn Insurance, spanning mobile phone manufacturers, telecom operators, insurance companies, and other institutions.

In the future, Miao Health will leverage big data and artificial intelligence to create a new Health Management 2.0 model, helping more people achieve better health.