David Boze of Seattle’s AM 770 KTTH had a detailed interview with Jeff Cunio, the CEO of Clarion Care. The full interview can be heard here.
David Boze Interview
October 2nd, 2009Clarion Care on the Radio
September 4th, 2009Jeff Cunio, the product owner of our newest product Clarion Care was interviewed on KVI 570 AM by Peter Weissbach. After sharing his personal experience about his daughter and the trouble that he had with his insurance and healthcare costs, Jeff explained how Clarion Care could have helped him. He goes on to flesh out the features of the website that include opening a direct line of communication between you and your doctor and managing, and archiving your personal medical records.
Clarion Care also has a radio advertisement that is currently airing on KTTH 770 AM in Seattle. You can listen by clicking the link below.
Seattle Software Firm Claims To Cure What Ails Health Care
August 26th, 2009Can empowering patients to manage their health care really reduce the cost of care while improving the quality?
(August 25, 2009) Seattle, WA - While many debate solutions for health care a Seattle Company has developed one which they confidently propose, will fix health care. With input from doctors and consumers Clarion Care set to finding a technical solution to challenge the health care status quo.
“The struggles with health care are numerous but the fix is relatively simple” says Jeff Cunio, CEO of Clarion Care. “First, put health care dollars back in the hands of the consumers. Second, facilitate direct communication between the doctor and patient - neither of these things occur now. Insurance companies manage dollars and regulation, policy, codes, and bureaucrats stand between the patient and the doctor.”
Clarion Care has developed a tool that they believe will provide all of these benefits and their ambitions don’t stop there, Cunio continues, “If every health care consumer joined Clarion Care tomorrow we could infuse as much as a trillion dollars into businesses and homes - this would not only save health care, it could turn around the world economy.”
Clarion Care has created a Software-as-a-Service application enabling consumers to manage and store all of their care information, companies to reduce the cost while improving quality and portability of benefits plan, and help provide stability to the private practice doctor. Dr. Roger Stark of the Washington Policy Center calls Clarion Care, “…a terrific plan to put patients in charge of their health care.” Find out more at www.clarioncare.com
For more information Contact
Jeff Cunio
206.384.7147
media@clarioncare.com
ClarionCare: Healthcare in Your Hands
August 25th, 2009As you may know we have a software company and we’ve been working very hard to transition from a service company to a product company. Currently we are working on a project that I’m really excited about and thought I’d share it with you. The project is called Clarion Care and is a viable alternative to traditional healthcare. The idea came from the input of doctors, healthcare professionals, and consumers.
So what is it exactly? We basically developed software to help people control their own healthcare and health records, work directly with their own doctor, teach people how to lower the costs of healthcare, and increase privacy.
How are we doing that?
- Giving you the tools and information to save an incredible amount over their traditional health care and your taxes too.
- Unlimited choice to which health care providers you see. (A list of IRS approved services can be found on the site.)
- Donating 10% of all membership dues to “A Good Work” which is a program we’ve established to help those who are in financial need and can’t afford health coverage.
- Negotiating fair, structured and transparent pricing between you and your doctor, pharmacist, masseuse and the rest of your health team. Did you know that prices can vary quite significantly between medical practices, pharmacies and other health related services? This does not mean that we are trying to get doctors and other health professionals to work for less; by paying cash for care your doctor can charge less while seeing several benefits over working with traditional insurance.
- Thanks for making it this far
I’ll stop here for now to shorten this up.
Right now I am asking all of my friends and family to go to the site and join today. I normally wouldn’t be so forward, but we have worked diligently to create this solution and we need your support. The website is at http://www.clarioncare.com and there is a promotion running now that makes membership $100 for the first year(50% less than normal) - the promo code is: townhall
I hope you can support us and join the cause and anything helps.
Here is a 20/20 special that I found very compelling and relevant to what we’re working on and though you may enjoy it.
Thanks to our friend Troy over at Dr PC Fix for his support. Troy’s Blog
Recap: How to Create a Worldwide Rave
February 24th, 2009I just got done watching a nice video from the people over at HubSpot and thought I would share it with those we are interested in inbound marketing. For those who do not wish to watch the whole thing, let me recap the highlights of it for your.
Nobody cares about your product but you.
You can have the coolest product in the world, but all your buyers are saying “Yea so, what does it do for me and what problems does it solve?”
Don’t be so in love with your product that you forget to solve actual problems. It’s common knowledge, but you really can’t stop hearing it enough.
No Coercion Required
Don’t lie - don’t be an a** - don’t do trick advertising… done, done & done.
Lose control
Create something that is valuable and let it lose in the world, with no strings attached. Don’t force registration, let other people spread the word for you and have faith in the people that are talking about you.
Put down roots
Be a participant in the industry that you are in. Talk about things, think about things, comment on blogs, reply to twitters and become known to those who are around you.
Create the triggers that let people share
Give them embed codes, text messages to forward, friends to invite, maximize your network externally.
Flesh out your buyer persona - how can you help that persona?
Know exactly who is buying & using your product and make sure that all decisions are made in that persona’s favor.
There it is, 60 minutes of video condensed to the topical points
Scrum in Under 10 Minutes
February 24th, 2009An Introduction
February 19th, 2009Hello and welcome to WebOnyx’s blog. My name is Damian Gibbs and I am the business and marketing guy for our company. I would like to start off this blog with a couple of comments about the actions and interests of bloggers who have come before me. Every company, in fact every person, who writes a blog I believe should have something to say, a topic that they enjoy, and with any luck will have a unique take on the industry or topic that they choose to write about; although many do not. Bloggers often have many different reasons for why they write. Some because it is a way for them to organize their thoughts, others in the hope of gaining fame and notoriety, because they like the sound of their own voice. While others especially most corporate blogs write about their businesses, and they quickly morph their blog into more of a press release format. Bloggers are a varied bunch and in my journey along this blogging adventure I must choose what kind of blogger I will be.
The Internet world has over 112 million of blogs according to technorati. With my initial thoughts on blogging above I personally have a hard time jumping into the middle of that very large pond because I love original thoughts, and yet I have never been one that is so high and mighty on myself to think that I could possibly come up with something new and original that could make a meaningful difference in the vast macro chasm of thoughts and ideas. So when the others in my company asked me to start a blog about our adventure with creating and marketing our product Apella which we bill as a Social Information Exchange (what exactly that is I will get into with later posts) I was hesitant. I have read that most corporate blogs are not believed and that many founders of companies only blog every once in a while, or even just parrot or regurgitate thoughts and ideas from more prominent people. I must ask myself can I make a meaningful contribution to the company, the product, and our customers through this blog? With out taking away from our core principle of getting more customers?
I believe that I can do it, just as other members of our team believed that could start a consulting business, or could build Apella from the ground up, or believed in the product and people so much that they moved from California to join us. Because products and blogs are more then just the bits and bytes that we move around on our computer screen. They are the passions, thoughts and countless arguments between driven people to succeed where others have failed. Having said that I would like to announce two rules to myself about this blog. This blog will be used first to organize my own thoughts on the product we have created and process that we are using to make it better and introduce it to the world. Secondly, and more importantly we will be using it as a platform to not just tell you the interested reader what we are doing, but more importantly to get your feedback, to hear your thoughts on the features and direction that we should take the product.
I hope that you will place us in your RSS feed so that you can keep an eye on us. If our posts become too stiff or you have ideas on topics that you would like to hear our opinions on, please let us know. You are the reader, you are here for a reason and as customers and potential customers we hold you in the higest regard, because with out you there can be no us.
Unified Communications & the Enterprise
February 16th, 2009Unified communications is coming to town… again - are you ready? For years companies have been offering unified communication systems as a way to get the right information to the right people at the right time, in the right form. Yet previous technologies struggled with helping the communicator find 
their intended targets, selecting the right form of media and then making sure that the target was reached. This is rapidly changing.
The two driving factors are GPS enabled mobile phones, and the untethering of these phones from the top down command & control structure where cell phone providers dictate what can be put on their phones, along with what kind of applications could be used over their networks. Apple and AT&T have shown us what is possible when individuals are allowed to harness the power of their phones.
Why are these two simple changes in the mobile landscape a game changer for unified collaboration?
First it brings all the promises of unified communication to fruition: it gives one enhanced, anywhere, anytime access to the corporate network, along with the data and resources that it holds, be it documents or human knowledge. Secondly, when designed correctly, this technology gives employees the ability to break out of the limited confines of email and allows greater flexibility in message type and delivery. The newest generation of phones have incredible integration of voice, video, pictures and text that never really took hold in the desktop world because it required too many peripherals. Now when you have an employee at a trade show, it is easy to send live video updates, or take pictures of the competition’s newest product line and all those subscribed to his ‘feed’ are instantly updated.
The productivity gains and efficiency of GPS systems have only begun to scratch the surface of their potential. Imagine a platform with 24/7 access to a query system based on the employees location and particular set of parameters that provides employees with up to the minute documents, tools, presentations and other tools when logging into the corporate network. The system filters the question and directs it to a target subset of experts in the enterprise who have expertise with the client the employee is at. The implications of GPS are endless, limited only by our imagination.
There are still a few challenges with GPS and the link to unified communications applications. The mobile application development field is still in its infancy, and many early adopters have flocked to the iPhone. Since many corporate users are just happy that they can get email on their blackberry, many corporations see this device more as a hip toy, than an enterprise friendly tool. The ability to access & view documents, run questions to experts in the field, post multimedia and have information follow you is something that will require a paradigm shift for corporations to realize that phones are capable of handling more than just their voice and text needs.
Even if it makes their life easier and more efficient, the vast majority of users are resistant to learning new programs. Which is why any unified communication software for mobile phones must be integrated with email, but not limited to email’s failings. This creates a tool that is familiar to the vast majority of workers, lowers user resistance and reduces the over all training cost.
The other major challenge to mobile phones becoming the center of the unified communication world is the vastly fractured OS and platform system that currently exists. This will whittle down over the next few years, but until then, unified communication providers either face high costs to develop applications for each major provider; or they hedge their bets and only provide support for one or two of the major players, limiting their market and their reach. This helps to make the adoption and creation of these systems a slow and unpredictable venture.
Although there is hope on this end also, security is the last major issue that will slow the adoption of this idea down. Many companies have been popping up in the last year that allow you to remotely wipe data off of a lost mobile phone. If the unified communication software limits the amount of data that can be downloaded to a device, along with providing the ability to shut off the information tap to a specific phone, one could guarantee that any data breach that did happen would have limited effects. As with the other factors, security again will get better and with time, the more forward thinking companies will realize that the productivity gains and convenience that these tools offer will out weigh the limited security risks.
In an ideal world, these unified communication devices will be applications that can be installed and updated remotely because of their constant connection to the Internet. Thus programs could be installed by sending an installation link through a text message, and when updates were needed they would notify the user of updates being installed at the end of their next session. This will be a major step toward mass adoption of software on mobile phones and we are starting to see of this with some of the newer phones and applications being created for them.
Overall, the mobile phone industry is heading in the right direction and it is only a matter of time before we see if the established companies in the unified communication field understand the significance of mobile phones in their overall game plan, or if a young upstart company can come in and fulfill the promises that the legacy players have never been able to. The benefits of making your phone the central repository for unified communication and collaboration has almost unlimited potential in reshaping the way that corporations gather and distribute data. The future will be interestingly mobile indeed.
