Taking on the "activation challenge"

Jun 7, 2013

Startups & Venture Capital

Promoboxx: Helping clients work with retailers

Taryn Plumb, Special to the Journal 

 

W. Marc Bernsau

While spending time at his family-owned package store as he grew up, Ben Carcio experienced first-hand how big brands interact with retailers selling their products.
And — particularly in the digital age — he knew the process could be improved.
So in 2010, he co-founded Boston-based Promoboxx, a startup that helps companies work with retailers to market their products.
Promoboxx largely deals with what Carcio calls the “activation challenge.”
“It’s one thing to create marketing materials,” said Carcio, the company’s CEO. “It’s another to create marketing materials that retailers get excited about and want to participate in.”
Promoboxx is an online marketing platform; through a Web-based dashboard, brands can select retailers or groups of retailers to participate in and customize campaigns, and, through Promoboxx’s retailer messaging platform, send them checklists of marketing tools and reminders to share via social media, their website or email blasts. They can then view charts and graphs of engagement levels, campaign views, social shares, and lead counts.
One big campaign Promoboxx’s platform powered was for Chevrolet prior to Super Bowl XLVI; that effort allowed 6,000 Chevy dealers to share the company’s Super Bowl ads prior to the game via various online channels.
At Canton-based Reebok, using Promoboxx “allows us to stay consistent with how our brand looks and feels at all times,” said Bethany O’Dell, Reebok’s U.S. associate trade marketing manager.
Along with focusing the message, the Promoboxx approach has allowed clients to get more feedback from retailers, which ultimately can be used to make the campaigns better, O’Dell said.
Promoboxx has also dedicated resources to helping retailers in times of need. In April, the startup launched the BacktoBackBay initiative, which worked to raise the profile of the dozens of retailers affected by the Boston Marathon bombings. Many of them had to close down during the ensuing investigation into the bombings, and Promoboxx pitched in by providing the retailers with free marketing tools, listing them on the BacktoBackBay site, and helping to initiate a recent “pub crawl” at a number of the restaurants and bars affected.
Ultimately, BacktoBackBay has engaged more than 200 affected retailers, Carcio said.
“We’re a Boston company at its core,” he said. “It’s critical to give back to the ecosystem.”
A participant in the 2011 session of TechStars Boston, Promoboxx now employs 22 and is supported by $2.25 million in seed funding. Investors include LaunchCapital, Boston Seed Capital, SK Ventures, CommonAngels and Stage 1 Ventures, as well as dozens of angel investors.
One goal for the future is to focus on franchise groups, Carcio said, and eventually expand to serve smaller brands that don’t necessarily fit into the firm’s current fee structure.
Although e-commerce is undoubtedly becoming more of a part of our lives, Carcio points to U.S. Census data showing that physical stores still account for 95 percent of retail sales. Thus, manufacturers have no choice but to support brick-and-mortar retailers, he said.
“Frankly, buying things in stores is never going to go away,” Carcio said.

Original story link here.

Getting to know you

May 31, 2013

Startups & Venture Capital

Localytics: Know your app users

Taryn Plumb, Special to the Journal 

 

W. Marc Bernsau 

Localytics CEO Raj Aggarwal maintains that consumers typically remain loyal to one-third of the apps they download.
Aggarwal, co-founder of the Boston-based app marketing and analytics startup, said the traditional practice has been to simply attract as many customers as possible, instead of engaging them and getting to know them and their habits.
“As the app space matures, people are recognizing that downloads are not the entire picture,” Aggarwal said.
Localytics, which launched in 2008 — the year following the first-generation iPhone release — offers software that helps companies identify, retain and engage their most valuable users of their apps.
Its tools help track not only who the users are and what devices they’re using, but where they’re coming from, how they navigate through the app, and where and why they leave it.
“It’s a much more hypothesis-driven approach to marketing,” said Aggarwal, who previously worked as a consultant for Apple Inc. as the company was developing the iPhone.
With the data from Localytics, companies can then categorize users — based on anything from demographics, to behaviors, to device, to loyalty — interact with them through in-app messaging, and attempt to engage those that may have fallen away. “Our focus right from the beginning was to help the leaders in this space have deep insight about their users,” Aggarwal said.
Localytics supports all major operating systems, is now integrated in more than 20,000 apps, and is collecting data on more than 800 million unique devices, according to Aggarwal. Its biggest concentration of customers are in media and entertainment (including The Wall Street Journal and A&E), retail and e-commerce (eBay), and software and technology companies (Microsoft and Salesforce).
The company has raised $8.75 million to date, most recently through a $5.5 million Series B round of funding announced in September and led by Polaris Venture Partners. The startup has grown its staff from 10 last year to its currently level of 40.
Rue La La — a Boston-based e-commerce site — has been using Localytics since its inception in 2008. Michael Putnam, a vice president at Rue La La, said Localytics has helped the firm learn more about its customers. The shopping site operates by opening a series of short-run boutiques every day; as each is launched at 11 a.m. Eastern time, customers are almost always viewing via their smart phones. Meanwhile, tablet usage peaks in the evening, and mobile usage increases on the weekend. Mobile sessions mean quicker visits and more impulsive, lower-cost purchases.
“You can really target what kind of information you’re sharing with people,” said Putnam, adding that the goal is to “show people things they’re likely to buy on the device that’s appropriate.”
Ultimately, mobile purchases comprise of 30 to 40 percent of Rue La La’s revenue. “It’s really taken off for us,” Putnam said.
And Aggarwal thinks it’s only a matter of time before that becomes the status quo. “People are becoming serious about mobile,” he said. “(App designers) are going to want to continue to get a holistic view of their users, a 360 view of their users, no matter where they are.”

Original story link here.

Steampunk therapy

Steampunk as art therapy for the autistic

By Taryn Plumb |  Globe Correspondent 

May 26, 2013

 

 

 

 

A pinball starts out at the top of a giant contraption, working along a copper track that curves and loops through a maze of five boxes. 
The curious course takes the ball past antique clock parts and hinges; patinaed hooks, brackets and door knobs; old light fixtures, outlet faceplates and porcelain toilet flush handles; and even a discarded sunburst-shaped airplane part affixed with a pair of vacant blue eyes.
A whimsical device worthy of Rube Goldberg, it is the culmination of nine weeks of invention, reinvention, tinkering, and trial and error. Fifteen young adults on the autism spectrum came together to create it through a first-of-its-kind art therapy program, “Steampunkinetics: Building Art into Science,” at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.
“It was a rather unusual experience, challenging at times, most definitely fun,” said Will Geary, 19, of Salem. “I definitely liked the overall process of going from sketch to reality.”
An exhibition and reception for the Steampunkinetics” project will be held from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Friday in the Northeast Arc’s Gallery at Southside, on 6 Southside Road in Danvers.
Steampunk is a burgeoning aesthetic — and, some say, subculture — that melds antique mechanical and industrial objects and elements from science fiction with modern-day items (consider it Jules Verne, 3.0). It incorporates Janusian thinking, a paradoxical perspective based on Janus, the Roman god associated with doorways, beginnings, and transitions.  
Janus was depicted with two faces looking in opposite directions — one ahead, the other behind.
Steampunkinetics came about through a collaboration between eminent steampunk artist and designer (and self-described steampunk evangelist) Bruce Rosenbaum of Sharon, and UMass Lowell assistant professor of psychology Ashleigh Hillier, who has been involved with various initiatives for young adults on the autism spectrum.
The two found that the eccentricity and intricacy of steampunk is an intense draw for people with disorders on the autism spectrum, who often excel at tasks centered around technology, mechanics, kinetics, and the understanding of how things work.
Hillier said they also are highly creative, often with phenomenal attention to detail, and have a piecemeal cognitive processing style that supports divergent thinking — the very essence of the steampunk design process.
Rosenbaum, who is working on various projects around the world and gives tours of his “steampunked” house in ­Sharon, said that an additional appeal of the aesthetic is that it is decidedly outside of the mainstream, which can very often fit with the perception that many intellectually disabled individuals have of themselves.
During the program, which concluded late last month, the 15 participants were broken into small groups. The goal was to create a house tower made of separate boxes decorated as different rooms but connected into a single cohesive, working structure. The participants visited a salvage yard to pick out various decorative and working elements, and finally collaborated to both bedeck their boxes and incorporate the track that would allow pinballs to travel down through the tower.
“It was a lot of fun, but very hard at times,” said Mackenzie Trippier, 20, of Pelham, N.H. “I think I made a few friends.”
In the final product, which resembles an enormous, transformed grandfather clock, the boxes are stacked one on top of the other, supported by porch columns atop bases made of giant sprocket gears, and topped with a gear mold dome and steam gauge.
A bicycle-chain pulley carries the balls to the top; they then run along a track made of copper refrigerator tubing through the “rooms,” painted and decorated to look like a games area, gym, library, boiler room, and basement. Affixed throughout are faucets and fixtures, gears, door knobs, and the silver sunburst face, which its creators dubbed Medusa, at the bottom.
Ultimately, Hillier explained, the goal was to help the participants increase self-esteem, improve attitudes toward peers, reduce feelings of stress and anxiety, and foster collaboration, communication, and the sharing of ideas — things that don’t always come easy to those on the autism spectrum.
“All of us often find it difficult to work in groups; it’s a skill that we all need to develop,” she said. “This population in particular has a lot of challenges in negotiating with other people, in figuring out what their role in the group is, in compromising with other people.”
The program was funded by $2,200 from the UMass Lowell psychology department, and another $4,000 from the university’s Joseph P. Healey Endowment Grant program. Hillier plans to publish her findings; the hope is to fund “Steampunkinetics’’ again next year, and possibly replicate it elsewhere.
Over the art and technology project’s nine weeks, its organizers, volunteers, and participants saw and experienced some marked changes.
“When they first started, a lot of [the participants] were really, really nervous, but as the weeks went on, they seemed to be making more decisions together, rather than doing their own separate thing,” said Hannah Johnson, a student in the community social psychology master’s program at UMass Lowell. “I really enjoyed seeing the transformation from beginning to end.”
Rosenbaum, for his part, is even more enthusiastic about the potentials of steampunk. “I think it can help change and improve lives,” he said.
Participants, meanwhile, noted the various challenges and frustrations they faced and, ultimately, overcame.
Geary, who attends Bunker Hill Community College and has a goal to pursue mechanical engineering, described “very different personalities” on his team, but noted that you “just learn to adapt.”
Elric Murphy agreed. He particularly had to come to terms with the ever-shifting nature of the project, he said, and the fact that what his team sketched out at the beginning wouldn’t necessarily be reflected in the finished product.
“We had our stressful moments,” said the Fitchburg 22-year-old. “But we worked it out.”
“You can’t get everything you want,” Justin Knickle, an effervescent 20-year-old from Billerica, agreed, calling the process “organized chaos,” and joking about at least one “dark day in the lab.”
“We were communicating and working together,” he added, then quipped: “All in all, I think we could’ve done much worse.”

Pictures by Mark Wilson. 

Original story link here. 

© 2013 The New York Times Company

Unique carousel for a unique city

Flight of fancy

Newburyport, Haverhill artists creating a whimsical new carousel for children visiting Boston’s Rose Kennedy Greenway

By Taryn Plumb |  Globe Correspondent

May 19, 2013

 

A miniaturized right whale is caught in mid-spout, baleen exposed, barnacles clinging.
A sea turtle swims, its wide shell blushed with yellow and iridescent red, flippers with waves of violet, pink, and cobalt.
Enormous butterflies hover – monarchs in dramatic orange and black; buckeyes boasting amethyst spots; swallowtails showing off elaborate webbed patterns of scarlet, purple, and blue.
Carousels usually evoke images of horses of various shapes and sizes, adorned with flamboyant regalia, circling endlessly in trots and leaps to a backdrop of colorful lights and carnival music.

But this carousel – designed, sculpted, and painted by two local artists, and soon to adorn the Rose F. Kennedy Greenway in Boston – is a horse of a different color.

In fact, it doesn’t have any horses at all.
“You’ll never see another one like this,” said designer Jeff Briggs of Newburyport. “It’s much more elaborate, much more intense.”
To be installed by Labor Day weekend, the carousel will include a resplendent assortment of local land, sea, and air creatures: lobsters, rabbits, owls, a skunk, squirrel, fox, right whale, sea turtle, cod, peregrine falcon, grasshopper, three species of butterflies, a sea serpent gondola, and a harbor seal chariot. According to the Rose Fitzgerald Greenway Conservancy, the animals were inspired by drawings from Boston schoolchildren, and the project, which also includes a new park, was funded by grants and several dozen donors.
Briggs, for his part, has spent the last three years dedicated to it, intensively researching the various creatures, then designing and sculpting them. PainterWilliam Rogers of Haverhill has worked to bring depth and dimension to what are essentially shaped canvases, painting each piece by hand and with airbrushes, and sometimes using sponging to create the illusion of fur.
“I had never really painted in three dimensions,” Rogers, who specializes in backdrops, murals, and trompe l’oeil, said on a recent afternoon in his Haverhill workshop, rubbing his hand over the shell of a giant lobster. “To get these things that are ghost-white and give them life is really exhilarating.”
Around him in the large former mill space, the figures were spread out in various stages of completion, all secured on their poles. Some were covered in plastic, others exposed and bare white; a few had sockets in need of eyes, while several were completed and seemingly prideful in their extravagant markings and colorings. The interior housing of the carousel, elaborately carved with butterflies, also took up one corner.
A total of 14 creatures will be spread out over three rows on the carousel; most will appear only once, while the butterflies, rabbit, lobster, and owl will be repeated. The 36-foot-diametercreation will be powered by an interior motor surrounded by the carved wood housing, and will also incorporate mirrors, an interactive sound system, and an LED theatrical light display, Briggs explained.
“As it turns, you’ll have this rhythm of light,” he said from his seat on the seal chariot, as yet unpainted and with ponderous, reddish glass eyes.
The animals, with bodies of fiberglass and eyes of custom-made glass, are both lifelike and whimsical.
The gray squirrel bounds, tail curled over its body. The fox prances, head turned and ears pert. The barn owl spreads its wings in midflight. The bright blue right whale blows out a spout of water, baring its baleen and pink tongue, barnacles fixed on its snout.
Entwining itself with the gondola, meanwhile, is a lesser-known creature: A shiny silver, pink and, orange oarfish – the longest bony fish in the sea, growing up to 50 feet and resembling an enormous eel. Rarely seen, it was once deemed a sea serpent.
The colors used in the carousel are vibrant and purposely exaggerated; Rogers accentuated each animal’s natural markings with shadowing and layering techniques and interference paint (which essentially changes color depending on the angle).
For instance, the lobster – tail lowered, claws clasped together – has its natural dark brown elements, but they’re accented with subtle purple and green hues. The turtle’s flippers shimmer with varying shades of purple, red, yellow, tan, and orange, while its shell features subtler strokes of brown, amber, crimson, and lavender. And the skunk, which seems a simple black and white, has hints of blue and violet.
“You can almost see the life in this thing,” Rogers said.
Getting to an end product required hours of research – Rogers and Briggs relied on numerous photographs of each animal at different times of day (Rogers pointed out that even a plain gray squirrel looks different in sunlight than at dusk), investigating their color ranges, movements, habits, where they live, what they eat.
Briggs said he uses “anything I can get for reference materials.”
He even bought a live lobster, photographed it, and ossified it to study its features, and spent several hours at the New England Aquarium “playing with the seals.”
“We try to get a real sense of what the animal is like,” he said, “what things to emphasize and de-emphasize.”
It’s a process he knows from experience: In 2006, he created a custom carousel for Detroit that includes a pair of swans, a snail, catfish, frog, heron, bald eagle, and even a mermaid. As a sculptor through his company, Briggs Design, he said he’s done “everything but” a traditional carousel horse.
Carousels had their golden period in the early part of the 20th century; since then, many have deteriorated or been dismantled. But Briggs said he has seen renewed interest in the traditional craft. “It’s an art form that’s come back to life,” he said.
And from an artist’s standpoint, “it’s making sculpture that is usable,” he said.
Rogers agreed.
When asked how he felt about thousands of people climbing all over his work, he said: “When you see a little kid up there with a smile on his face, it’s like, ‘Wow!’ ”

Origins of the magical ride

■In the 12th century, Arabian and Turkish horsemen played a game on horseback described as “carosella,” or a “little war.”
■Gustav Dentzel of Germany pioneered the modern carousel in America in the 1860s.
■The Flying Carousel in Oak Bluffs on Martha’s Vineyard, built in 1876, is the nation’s oldest platform carousel and has been designated by the US Department of the Interior as a national landmark. It originally operated on Coney Island and was moved to a red barn in Oak Bluffs in 1884.
■There were more than 4,000 built during the ride’s golden age in the early 1900s.
■About 150 intact carousels are estimated to exist today.
 
Sources: International Museum of Carousel Art, Martha’s Vineyard Preservation Trust.

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© 2013 The New York Times Company

The art of (and the marketplace for) notes

May 17, 2013

Startups & Venture Capital

Startup puts the art of note-taking on sale

Taryn Plumb, Special to the Journal

 

Courtesy

There’s an art and a discipline to taking notes and studying. And just like anything, some people are better at it than others.
Boston-based Flashnotes aims to improve the learning experience by allowing college students to trade in a valuable commodity: study materials.
“This is students helping students,” said Dave Petruziello, the firm’s chief operating officer, who co-founded the company with Mike Matousek in late 2010. “That’s what’s been missing in education.”
Flashnotes lets students buy and sell course notes, flash cards, chapter presentations, videos and study guides. As a result, the company claims that 65 percent of users increase their GPA, determined through a case study it performed at John Carroll University in Ohio.
The startup is now actively marketing its service in six schools, but it’s also spread virally to 200 others, according to Petruziello.
“We’re leveling the playing field for college students, allowing them to find the materials they need for class so that their results go up,” he said.
At the same time, he noted, the site is also enabling students — who are often cash-strapped and will most likely face years of loan debt — to make money. The average selling price for a set of notes is $8.50, although he said he’s seen it go as high as $200 for highly specialized content.
Sellers set their own price and are encouraged to promote their materials. (The company keeps 30 percent of sales.) Like eBay, the site also has a crowdsourcing element, fostering ranking and rating.
Northeastern University student Craig Curelop said he has made about $800 over the past year using the service. A business administration student expecting to graduate in 2015, he has created study guides and flash cards to sell to classmates in three different courses (after seeking permission from instructors).
Ultimately, the process has helped him improve his grades, too.
“Naturally, as I make these flash cards and study guides, I am studying, as well,” he said. “With Flashnotes, I am forced to be proactive, make the study guides in advance, and really make sure I have a grasp on the material by the time the exams come.”
Petruziello declined to disclose the number of users of Flashnotes. But he said the site is growing every month.
Flashnotes, which currently has 16 employees, moved from Cleveland to Boston in late 2011. The startup is backed by $1.8 million from Atlas Venture and SoftBank Capital, along with angel investors including Michael Lazerow, Paul Sethi and Paul Tedeschi.
Flashnotes is currently in the process of extending that round to receive more equity funding, Petruziello said. The company is also working on partnerships with plagiarism checker Turnitin.com and education technology company Blackboard, and is pursuing various incentives and promotions — such as concert tickets — for its most active and successful sellers.

Original story link here.

Walking to learn

Walking tours tell local lore, history

By Taryn Plumb |  Globe Correspondent

May 12, 2013

In our day-to-day lives, there’s so much we overlook: tidbits of history, flora, fauna, architecture, animals — even other people.
The goal of walking tours is to improve our connections with the world around us — and area residents have a variety of illuminating treks to choose from this spring and summer.
“Many people love to hear about the stories of the town they live in,” said Julie Nardone, chairwoman of the Ashland Historical Commission, which is offering a walking tour focusing on the community’s economic legacy Saturday. “The stories engage us, make us proud of where we live, and help us understand that we too are part of history.”

In an example of a lesser-known detail, considering the small population at the time, why did early settlers of Concord set up two separate burial grounds?

Scratch off race, religion, and social standing as possible reasons — ultimately, it came down to superstition and logistics.

According to Joel Andrews, the founding director of Concord Guides, the belief at the time was that transporting a body over moving water would disturb the spirit. So, with Mill Brook cutting through town, whichever side of the stream you lived on determined where you’d be laid to rest.
It’s one of the insights that Andrews, who is also a physician, shares on his regular walking tours of the town famous for its role in the American Revolution and its literary residents.
In honor of Mother’s Day, Andrews will be offering half-price admission to moms for his two-hour stroll Sunday exploring the town’s Colonial, revolutionary, literary, environmental, and Native American past — and he will include some yarns about the town’s famous mothers, too.
“Concord is a really unique place, because two big revolutions started here,” he explains in a virtual tour on his website, www.concordguides.com.
The first being the American Revolution, which had at its outset the battle at the North Bridge in 1775; the second was the intellectual revolution heralded by Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Louisa May Alcott in the 1800s.
Tour participants will explore well-known landmarks such as Monument Square, Old Hill Burying Ground, the so-called “American Mile” (composed of original houses from the 1600s and 1700s), North Bridge (which may or may not have been the site of the “shot heard round the world”), and “Author’s Ridge” in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, where Thoreau, Emerson, Alcott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and their family members are buried in close proximity.
Andrews, in his video tour, describes how “peaceful and quiet” the North Bridge area remains today.
“You could step back 200 years, and the scene’s changed very little,” he says. “But what happened here changed the world.”
Other area tours delve deeper into how individual communities were shaped by the world.
For instance, a trio of monthly walks offered by the Wellesley Historical Society began April 24 with an exploration of how transportation transformed the town. The series resumes next weekend, with an installment starting at 9 a.m. Saturday, and wraps up on June 9.
Similarly, neighborhood self-guided tours are offered by historical societies and commissions in Newton, Maynard, Sudbury, and Framingham’s Saxonville section.
Ashland’s walk on Saturday, meanwhile, will focus on the town’s once-vibrant manufacturing economy and downtown area, according to Nardone. Guide Jennifer Lecesse will discuss the importance of water to Ashland’s early economy, the arrival of the train in town, its lost Greek Revival and Victorian hotels, churches, and office buildings, and the formerly booming Tilton’s Boot and Shoe Factory.
“Outside influences had a huge impact on Ashland,” said Lecesse, who grew up in Ashland but was trained as a tour guide in England. “It really shows that we are not a secluded little town, we make up a larger picture.”
But perhaps one of the most defining periods in the town’s history was in the early 1900s.
Henry Ellis Warren invented the electric clock in Ashland; by 1927, his Warren Telechron Co. employed 1,500, and sold 20 million clocks, according to Nardone. But then, in 1943, General Electric assumed control of the operation, and when the company closed its Ashland factory,the jobs went with it.
“The history of our local economy is the history of the American economy: Jobs come and go, booms get followed by busts, but new economic ideas emerge and the cycle repeats itself,” said Nardone.
The walk in Ashland will be followed with a reception at Stone’s Public House, an allegedly haunted place that’s been showcased on several television shows on the paranormal.
The commission offers one walking tour a year, and the tours usually draw upwards of 60 people, Nardone said.
But they serve a dual purpose, she said: The town is trying to revive its downtown, and creating awareness of what it once was can foster support for that.
Similarly, the commission hopes to save the remaining historic buildings downtown — many of which have been lost to demolition, development, and fire — and possibly to set up historic districts. Ashland, she noted, is one of the only towns in the area without designated local historic districts.
“Our historical walks are a great way to connect with the folks who came before us,” said Nardone, “and the folks that live among us.”

© 2013 The New York Times Company

Navigating the healthcare system, one program at a time

Nonprofit provides path to health services, savings

By Taryn Plumb |  Globe Correspondent  

May 05, 2013

Navigating the health care system can be confusing, overwhelming, and frustrating, with or without insurance.
So the goal of Gloucester-based national nonprofit NeedyMeds Inc. is to provide a guiding hand through the puzzle of prescription costs, copays, deductibles, and the thousands of available assistance programs.
Through its website, telephone help line, and physical outreach, the organization serves as a clearinghouse that provides information on — and helps connect people with — programs across the country. Its smartphone apps and drug discount card also allow people to manage and save on their medications.
“We try to cover every single type of program we can find,” said the organization’s president and cofounder, Dr. Richard Sagall. “We’re continually adding more information. Everything we know is on the site.”
A retired physician who practiced family and occupational medicine in Bangor, Maine, for nearly 20 years, ­Sagall initially started the website in 1997 with social worker Libby Overly.
At first, it was dedicated solely to patient assistance programs, known in the industry as PAPs, through which pharmaceutical companies provide free or discounted medications to those who can’t afford them.
“For a long time, it was an evenings and weekends type of thing,” Sagall explained.
Until he went full time with it in 2005.
Today, it has 12 employees and a handful of volunteers, and lists about 16,000 programs (although that changes daily, Sagall said) in a variety of categories.
Serving all 50 states as well as US territories, the website (www.needymeds.org) attracts from 15,000 to 17,000 unique visitors most workdays, and its literature has been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, and Khmer (the language of Cambodia). It’s largely funded by grants, donations, sales of its PAPTracker software for smaller medical offices, and syndication of its information.
Since its inception, NeedyMeds has collectively saved people close to $34.5 million in health care costs — or about $1.5 million a month, according to Sagall. He said managing the nonprofit is rewarding.
“One of the reasons people go into medicine is because they want to help people,” he said during a recent interview in his office in Gloucester. “I can help more people with NeedyMeds than I ever could have in private practice.”
The thousands of listings on the website include patient assistance programs; free, low-cost, and sliding-scale clinics; disease-based assistance; camps and retreats; scholarships, drug coupons, and rebates; application assistance; and government resources. Visitors typically search for help through the generic or brand-name medications they’re taking, or by their diagnosis, and can also watch various online seminars and videos.
Meanwhile, the NeedyMeds drug discount card, which is free, is accepted at 70,000 pharmacies across the country, with an average savings of about 50 percent, or $35, per prescription, according to Sagall.
There’s no registration or personal information required to get a card, and people can use it whether they have insurance or not (but it can’t be used on top of insurance — just if the insured doesn’t have enough coverage or the card offers a better price than a copay).
The NeedyMeds website allows visitors to download a copy of the card for printing; the organization will mail a plastic card to people who send a self-addressed stamped envelope, and one can also be ordered online through PayPal for a $5 donation to cover postage and handling.
“The only eligibility requirement to use the card is you have to be breathing,” Sagall said. “Our goal is to maximize savings. Nobody should pay list price for a drug.”
The nonprofit also has two smartphone apps. One has a pharmacy finder and serves as a mobile version of the card that can be scanned at the register; the second serves as an alert system, notifying users when to take their medications, and offers the latest information about a prescription drug and its interactions.
In all cases — the website, card, apps, and help line — NeedyMeds knows nothing personal about its users, Sagall said. Information related to usage statistics and money saved is compiled, but user information such as location, socioeconomic status, race, or gender is not. Ultimately, such personal information could be valuable marketing information for other entities to use or sell, he said, but that is “something we just don’t do.”
The nonprofit does forge partnerships with local communities, including Chelmsford, Dracut, Gloucester, and Lowell. In those cases, NeedyMeds can track how often the card is used by residents of the participating community.
About $450,000 has been saved by Gloucester residents who use the card, according to Elizabeth Messenger, NeedyMeds’ director of outreach. The nonprofit also set up a dedicated help line for the city.
“The discount card has made a difference in the health of many residents,” Mayor Carolyn A. Kirk said in a prepared statement.
Looking ahead, Sagall said, his goal is to add new information on more programs, such as clinical trials, and to train volunteer ambassadors, as well as expand the education of professionals and lay people. Meanwhile, NeedyMeds would like to get the drug discount card “in everybody’s hands,” he said.
Simply maintaining the current information on the website is a sizable task; details are updated daily, with employees constantly keeping up with new drugs, changes in requirements and coverages for various programs, and the availability (or shortages) of medications.
“Every time we think the work is done,” Sagall said, “we find something else.”

Photos by Jonathan Wiggs:




Original story link.

© 2013 The New York Times Company