Livongo Addresses the Chronic-Condition Epidemic, Introduces Applied Health Signals

Livongo empowers people with chronic conditions to live better and healthier lives. The company was built from the ground up to change the care paradigm and transform the experience for the millions of people who are living with chronic conditions, beginning with diabetes.

Powered by a set of capabilities and technologies called Applied Health Signals, Livongo creates personalized experiences for its members, so they receive actionable, personalized and timely insights and nudges, which lead to better clinical and financial outcomes while creating a better experience for people managing their chronic conditions.

Livongo is the first company to apply health signals to improve the health of people with chronic conditions, aggregating a broad set of information, interpreting what it means by separating the meaningful health signals from the noise, applying the insights to our members and iterating on what works until it’s perfect. It has more than 100,000 members across 600+ enterprise clients, including dozens of Fortune 500 companies such as Target, Amazon, Microsoft, Loews, FedEx and UPS, four of the seven largest payers, and the two largest PBMs.

Interview Snippet with the Leader of Livongo, Glen Tullman

Q. What were the grounds on which you have expanded Livongo and its offerings over the years?

Since the inception of Livongo, we have always focused on making it easier for people with chronic conditions to stay healthy. We focus on the whole person, and to do so and reduce the confusion, complexity, and cost, we address multiple chronic conditions on one comprehensive platform. By doing so, Livongo can better care for the whole person and the personal health needs of each member.

Q. What is your company’s vision statement? And to what extent are you successful in achieving the same?

Our vision is to empower people with chronic conditions to live better and healthier lives. We do that by aggregating, interpreting, applying and iterating health signals for individuals across their conditions. We are successfully delivering positive clinical, financial and member satisfaction results at scale. Our members reduce their HbA1c by 0.8 points on average and sustain this over three years while reducing hypoglycemia 15%. Eighty-seven percent reduce their BMI by >1 and 78% sustain weight loss over 12 months. We also save our clients $83pppm on average and deliver a net promoter score of +64.

Q. What challenges did you face in your initial years? What can your peers learn from it?

In healthcare, the most important challenge is to break through the noise. Our customers, large self-insured employers, are approached by hundreds of small innovative companies and can’t look at or test every one. There are also challenges around passing security audit, other references, etc. So, brand recognition is hard to establish. Fortunately, with more than 600 satisfied clients, we’ve now started to see a faster ramp up rate.

Q. Two-way communication is the key. Employees need to feel they have an outlet for sharing their observations and ideas, is this true with your company?

At Livongo, our culture of open communication is heavily driven by the standard stuff like monthly town hall meetings where employees have the opportunity to ask questions to the Executive Leadership Team. We also do frequent surveys on benefits, diversity, and culture delivered to employees, and they drive change as needed without removing the things that Livongo employees love. But the real secret sauce is that our leaders roll up their sleeves and work side-by-side with our team, and we also do a great deal of charity events, which allows for a lot of cross-functional discussion.

Q. How well do your employees know their role in contributing to the teams and the company’s success?

As a fast-growing, mission-driven organization, Livongo is fortunate to attract top talent. Employees at all levels are given the opportunity and are encouraged to be creative in their work, propose new ideas, and work with decision-makers to continue to positively affect our members’ lives.

During onboarding, all Livongans receive training in the company’s PROPEL values — People, Results, Originality, Passion, Excellence, and Learning. These values serve as an anchor that grounds each employee in their work. Employees are evaluated on their ability to exemplify the company values.

Biannually, Livongans have the opportunity to nominate seven employees for the PROPEL awards, which includes one award for each value and one additional award for the Most PROPELled Player. These awards recognize employees who are exemplary in living our values and contributing to the company’s success.

 The Future Path

Headquartered in Mountain View, CA, with offices in Chicago and San Francisco, Livongo recently announced a new category of technologies and capabilities, Applied Health SignalsTM, that for the first time combines data science, behavior enablement, and clinical impact to reinvent the healthcare experience for people with chronic conditions. The company also announced positive early results for its Hypertension solution and introduced the first at-home, voice-enabled cellular blood pressure monitoring system in the U.S.

Looking into the future, Livongo will continue to expand into other conditions. Livongo is building an Applied Health Signals engine called AI+AI (Aggregate, Interpret, Apply and Iterate) to increasingly provide actionable, personalized and timely health signals to people regardless of their chronic conditions.

The Man behind the Picture

Glen Tullman, Chairman and CEO: Tullman is a visionary leader and entrepreneur. He previously ran two public companies that changed the way healthcare is delivered. He is also Co-founder and Partner in 7wireVentures, a Chicago-based investment firm focused on healthcare. Through 7wire, he has Co-founded a number of ventures, including one of the country’s leading solar energy companies, SoCore Energy, sold to Edison Ventures, and a digital education company. Tullman also holds investments in several ventures focused on mobile and cloud-based health solutions.

As a recognized leader in healthcare, Glen published On Our Terms in 2018. On Our Terms proposes that the solution to address the chronic-condition epidemic may well be turning to the last place we might expect: the person who is living with the chronic condition on a daily basis. A strong proponent of philanthropy, he serves as a Chancellor to the International Board of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and serves on the Board of the American Diabetes Association.

“Anyone can have an idea, many can implement it, but it takes a strong team of highly-motivated self-starters, filled with passion and courage to get up after a fall in order to keep it going. And in Livongo, we have that.”