Welcome to v1.0 of the interactive Innovation in Employee Benefits Ecosystem, curated by Ursa Major Consulting.

There are many great companies creating solutions across the employee benefit spectrum - sometimes too many to keep track of for professionals in the space. That's why we created this interactive tool that highlights some of the best and brightest among them. This list is by no means exhaustive; instead, it contains the solutions that we have probed the most and believe provide best-in-class, forward-leaning solutions today.

We hope you find our tool of value. Don't shy away from offering your feedback and checking back for updated info and future releases.

We live in the age of Big Data. It’s become so prevalent in helping us as consumers that we hardly pay it much attention in our daily lives. Whether we’re relying on Amazon to show us a selection of books that might suit our interests to Google serving up content squarely aimed at our online consumption habits, making complex decisions is easier than ever thanks to deep analytics.

Big data helps us just about everywhere nowadays except in our healthcare choices. Instead of leveraging information that is applicable to us, we’re stuck in aMonty Hall problem wondering which options are best and keeping our fingers crossed that our decisions are the right ones: pick door 1, 2 or 3 hope you don’t end up with a goat.

When it comes to healthcare, the lack of personalized support doesn’t help us predict or answer complex health outcomes for ourselves or our families. This dilemma is made worse by the increasingly complex healthcare environment that requires cost management strategies; whether it’s high deductible health plans, health savings accounts, premier networks, reference based pricing, or complex and confusing drug formularies, there’s no shortage of consumer questions that could be readily answered with individualized insight.

Imagine bringing the same techniques and technologies that we already use when shopping for goods to the healthcare space. Obeo Health is doing just that. Obeo Health’s solutions change how employees engage with their healthcare choices by utilizing sophisticated algorithms that combine the employee’s specific historical health information with millions of bits of provider data.

I am excited to join forces with Obeo Health in an Advisory role. Their evaluation and comparison tool is the best I have seen in the market, but that’s not the spark that enthuses me most. They have a smart platform that combines advanced prescriptive analytics and personal health data to give more transparency and control to users.

By using historical data and prescriptive analytics, they give employees the tools to compare, evaluate and model the cost and quality of their healthcare options. They also help them decode the Explanation of Benefits (EOB), check healthcare billing for accuracy, and provide personalized education- all using plain language that clearly describes each concept and reinforces ideas and values with simple graphics, charts and diagrams.

If you are interested in learning more, check out the Obeo Health Founders Statement, learn about their solutions, or reach out to me to discuss.
​
Nate