Interview: Brent Poole, Mindbloom Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer

Brent Poole is engaging on the phone – no wonder his company, Mindbloom, founded with co-founder Chris Hewett, has taken health engagement to a new level.Before Mindbloom, Brent and Chris realized that they took the stresses and pressures created at work back home, leading to a decrease in quality of health and lifestyle. With Chris’s knowledge of behavioral sciences from his work with video games and Brent’s focus on finance and operations, the two created Mindbloom, which couples behavioral psychology with social gaming. In Brent’s words, “To really innovate in the healthcare space you need to take a perspective outside of healthcare. When you are talking customer engagement, you should look at gaming.” Last year the company partnered with Aetna to optimize the Mindbloom Life Game experience and released the program to all Aetna members.Adding a level of personalization (users’ music and media), the Bloom* app helps people think more deeply and become more engaged in their health through focused motivation. “This isn’t about creating another experience for the Quantified Selfers – it’s about getting people who aren’t focused on their health outcomes to become more active by showing them that small decisions can create a healthier lifestyle,” explained Brent. The Bloom* app sends self-directed and preset inspirational reminders and notifications to your mobile device throughout the day, anything from a reminder to drink more water to a reminder to go for a walk. The app currently has 320k downloads. Mindbloom also recently partnered with Vivacity, a workforce wellness company, to give their users access to various Mindbloom applications. The first of which is Juice, an app that tasks users to track their energy levels during the day based on levels such as sleep and exercise. The app creates awareness on how your behaviors change the way you feel. Launched November 20th, traction has been fantastic with 31k downloads to date with more than a third of users engaging with the app at least 7 days in a row.What can we look forward to in 2013? The company is working on making all its existing applications cross-platform, not just on iOS. Also, Mindbloom has several apps in the ideation stage and two in production. We should see the first 2013 release in early spring, and another shortly thereafter. Brent wouldn’t release further details, but did say that they aligned with Bloom* and Juice, both linking positive psychology, personal efficacy, and behavioral health. We are certainly excited for what's to come!