“The Dig|Benefits Technology Innovator Award, by EBN, recognizes visionaries who are driving technology innovation, overcoming organizational and technology barriers, deploying leading-edge technology, and shaping benefit technology regulation and policy”
In honor of Motion Connected's CEO, Michael Troup, winning one of the Digi Benefits Technology Innovator Awards we wanted to highlight his history with technology, and how it has continued to shape his companies’ purpose in the benefits world.
Michael founded Forsite Benefit Partners in 2004, and has developed it into an employee benefits agency with a reputation for delivering innovative solutions for cost containment. Faced with typical offerings of health questionnaires, biometric tests, manual logging of food and competitions with shake pedometers, Troup thought there had to be more to wellness consulting.
Using these type of programs his clients were showing no changes on their group biometric trends. Analyzing the health issues impacting employer populations ( obesity, high cholesterol, diabetes, and hypertension), Michael determined he wanted to use technology to move the needle on health by initially focusing on physical activity. With a contract programmer and some Nike+ sensors, the myInertia wellness platform was born.
The impact of the program on Forsite Benefit Partner’s clients was profound, with personal success stories, improvement on biometric scores and a visible shift in the health culture of corporations. The decision was made to hire a full-time team and launch the myInertia wellness platform nationwide.
Nine years later, the myInertia platform has seen successes in creating healthy cultures across the country. The program has helped Forsite Benefit clients and other employers drive high levels of engagement by leveraging easy to use technology including accessible health kiosks, affordable wearables, responsive customer support, and hub syncing for populations without access to PCs/smartphones. Client outcomes have included the development of healthy cultures, individual health improvement and population health risk improvement.
While increasing physical activity levels remains at the core of the program, the myInertia platform has evolved to include the custom development of points based wellness program including preventive care, challenges, integration of 3rd party programs and biometrics.
Michael has been instrumental in leading his growing myInertia team to deliver a product that will facilitate wellness management, provide objective data for integration with benefit incentives and motivate personal accountability for health in employees.
“The evolution of technology and wellness programs has been a rewarding journey to be on. It’s an honor to be recognized as a leader in this vital arena to our society and economy. It’s been exciting to see myInertia grow from a thought all those years ago into a robust platform influencing positive health change.” – Michael Troup