Neal commercialized the first digital therapeutic solutions in the United States including the largest telephonic smoking cessation coaching program in the United States, Free & Clear (now called Quit for Life as part of an acquisition of Alere by Optum) and the first book on instituting corporate smoking policies as separate operating division within Group Health Cooperative. This became the basis for a for-profit arm of Group Health focused on telephonic diabetes & asthma management, tobacco cessation, and telephonic nurse triage and support. While at Group Health Neal was also the founder and Managing Partner of Health at Work, the first employer-based health and wellness company in the Pacific Northwest. Their work entailed development of a full continuum of services from health promotion services to value-based worksite-based clinics integrated into the insurance product.
Based on the success of Free & Clear, Neal was recruited to initiate a new division for Monsanto, Lexant, focused on prospective population health management. The intent of Lexant was to build omni-channel health interventions across the continuum of care based upon prospective health risk models developed by the University of Michigan Health Management Research Center. Lexant’s market focus was payers, large employers, and pharma.
As the CEO of the NewSof Group he developed many of the early health related social networking platforms including the American Cancer Society’s Cancer Survivors Network. After selling NewSof to subsidiary of Anthem Blue Cross, Neal was the Director of Member Engagement at Premera Blue Cross responsible for engaging Premera’s self-funded employers and 2.2 million members in reaching their optimal health. At Premera, in conjunction with Dr. Dee Edington at the University of Michigan, he developed the Program Impact Measure, designed to integrate claims and risk data with corporate policies and practices to assess the overall health and productivity of employers. He was also responsible for developing Amazon’s business case for developing their worksite clinics.
Neal is a noted author and speaker and continues to be acknowledged as one of the true innovators in the world of health behavior change and the role of personalization, contextually resonant communication, conversational AI, and social networking.
