Health Mobius > About Health Mobius > History of the Company
| History of the Company |
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In March 2001, the company's set out to address patient/physician relationships
by developing a simple health website and to develop a medical weight loss program that would compete
with commercial programs. Doctors were seeing patients who were getting health information and weight
loss solutions from the Internet, on TV and in magazines. The information usually conflicted with
sound medical advice, was erroneous and was often dangerous. While they knew that a rapidly growing
number of patients were accessing health information online, they could not justify investing the time,
money and resources to address the needs of these eHealth patients, even thought the physician was
viewed as the most logical, trusted and preferred source of healthcare information and services.
In the process of exploring the original concept and researching the habits of patients and physicians,
we identified a rapidly growing movement to educate doctors and encourage them to play an active role
in treating overweight and obesity in their practice because of the growing epidemic, long-term health
consequences to the patient and the increasing costs of healthcare to treat related diseases. This
directive was issued by the National Institute of Health (NIH) and emphasized by the major professional
medical organizations as well as The Centers for Obesity Research and Education (C.O.R.E.), that
conducted workshops targeted to physicians interested in enhancing overweight and obesity treatment in
their practice. Eight of the top obesity institutions make up C.O.R.E. including Mayo Clinic, Beth
Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Northwestern Memorial Wellness Institute. Additionally, the NIH
developed guidelines for the identification and treatment of obesity to encourage physicians to implement
those protocols in their practice. While tremendous interest and effort has been generated to treat
obesity as a medical condition, no one has provided practical solutions that enable primary care
physicians to easily implement these directives, without a major investment in time, money, and resources.
This message was also recommended in "Crossing the Quality Chasm", issued by The National Academy of
Sciences, Institute of Medicine and the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality (AHRQ), who were
specifically addressing the issues of translating research and scientific knowledge into tools that would
promote adoption of these best practices.
After careful review of extensive research studies on healthcare, the Internet and patient and physician
behavior, as well as personal interviews with the nation's leading experts on weight loss research,
treatment, and its effects on other chronic conditions, we identified an unfulfilled market need, when
resolved, will have enormous financial potential and societal benefits. Health Mobius positioned itself
to directly address the medical treatment of obesity, disease management and patient education through
the use of efficient Internet tools it has developed.
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