Alan Health Offering: it’s still day one.

When I joined Alan nearly seven years ago, Alan already had the ambition to be the one-stop health partner, and I was tasked with exploring what this meant. Little did I know that our health offering would evolve through a series of chapters, each with its challenges and breakthroughs.

This journey hasn't been a straight line. It's a series of distinct chapters, each building upon the last—periods of exploration and uncertainty followed by clarity and execution, only to be disrupted again and again.

Initially, we faced our "Blue Ocean" phase—a vast landscape of possibilities with no clear path forward. Our health services were minimal, and our convictions about what we should become were still forming. The breadth of potential solutions made finding our way challenging. How do you choose a direction when everything is possible?

We found our compass by starting from our relationship with our insured members. At that time, our interactions were primarily transactional—members came to us asking about their reimbursements.

We recognized that health could be deeply emotional, and we needed to evolve our relationship with members gradually and consistently. Rather than diving immediately into complex health topics, we positioned ourselves as guides—orienting people, providing advice, and offering support.

This approach materialized in our first products: an interactive map to find health professionals, yearly dental reminders, and plans for a comprehensive prevention program. We thought we had figured out our initial path.

One week after sending email invites to join our prevention program, COVID appeared. Two weeks later, we were in lockdown.

Suddenly, the complex world of healthcare was simplified to a single disease we needed to respond to quickly and meaningfully.

At first, we scrambled. Yet as we learned more about the situation, we took bolder steps: sending masks, creating a self-diagnosis questionnaire, and partnering with a young doctor to launch a medical chat as COVID questions had started to flood our customer service.

This crisis provided focus when we needed it most. With health narrowing to one topic, we could concentrate our efforts and innovate rapidly. The medical chat we developed during this period remains core to our Alan Clinic offering today.

As COVID eventually became more manageable and commonplace, a new opportunity emerged that demanded our attention.

The pandemic and extended periods of isolation triggered a mental health awakening. Companies and individuals alike recognized the importance of psychological well-being in a way they hadn't before.

We saw an opportunity to make a meaningful difference in this space. We acquired a company called Jour to launch Alan Mind—a dedicated offering designed to provide mental health support, with digital tools for individuals, workshops for teams, and employee wellbeing assessments for organizations. We were proud of identifying this wave and riding it effectively.

Yet as we deployed these services, we encountered a contradiction: we aspired to be a one-stop health partner, yet we had separated our mental health and insurance offerings. This disconnect led us to our next strategic shift.

We returned to our core promise of simplification by unifying our health services and insurance into a single, cohesive offering.

By this point, our health portfolio had expanded significantly beyond insurance: medical chat, therapy services, health content and exercises, a specialized back pain program (Alan Clinic), and even an e-shop for glasses and contact lenses (Alan Shop). 

But, engaging our members on this broad range of services without undermining our insurance core proved challenging. 

After multiple iterations, our recent release centered on Alan Play represents a crucial milestone in our quest to seamlessly integrate our insurance and health offerings into something easily accessible and immediately valuable.

We can already see the outline of the next frontier shaped by three major trends:

Also, while the future of health and prevention lies at the intersection of these trends, we’ll need to expand into the physical world in parallel, where much of healthcare still happens.

After seven years and multiple strategic evolutions, we remain convinced that our most significant achievements lie ahead. This isn't year seven—it's day one of what's possible.

At Alan, we're not just building a better insurance company. We're gradually, methodically reimagining how people experience health and well-being throughout their lives. Each phase of our journey has brought us closer to this vision while preparing us for the next leap forward. The journey continues, and I can't wait to see what we'll build next as we're just getting started.