WebMD Bolsters Affected person Engagement Choices By way of New Acquisition

WebMD has acquired the property of Healthwise, an Idaho-based nonprofit supplier of well being schooling content material and affected person engagement instruments. The New Jersey-based firm introduced the deal on Thursday and didn’t disclose monetary particulars.

Healthwise’s working property will develop into a part of WebMD Ignite, the corporate’s division that provides tech options to suppliers and well being plans to raised interact with their sufferers and members. WebMD Ignite offers these engagement instruments to greater than 650 prospects, together with Windfall, Trinity Well being, Advocate Aurora, VillageMD and Centene.

“WebMD Ignite helps suppliers and payers of each type of their initiatives to amass, preserve and retain relationships with their members and sufferers. We name it ‘from discovery to restoration’ — every part from affected person or member acquisition, to managing their knowledge, to doing many alternative sorts of media outreach, to right through affected person and member schooling whereas that individual is in an lively care journey,” defined Ann Bilyew, WebMD’s senior vice chairman of well being in addition to group normal supervisor for WebMD Ignite.

The Healthwise deal follows WebMD’s 2020 acquisition of The StayWell Firm, which was a subsidiary of Merck. By way of that deal, WebMD gained StayWell’s worker wellbeing platform, in addition to the Krames scientific affected person schooling platform.

Earlier than 2020, Krames, Healthwise and WebMD Ignite have been the three massive gamers within the affected person schooling area, Bilyew mentioned. All three firms had merchandise that have been totally built-in into clinicians’ EHR workflows, and so they all boasted an “extremely broad corpus of content material,” she famous.

“We acquired Krames, which was primary out there, and Healthwise was quantity two. By buying Healthwise, we’ve simply develop into, I’d say, the indeniable market chief in offering affected person schooling to each suppliers and payers,” Bilyew declared.

Healthwise’s working property embrace software program, instructional content material, tech merchandise, shopper relationships and sure logos. 

For instance, the corporate has EHR-embedded instruments to assist schedule appointments, remind sufferers about visits and join individuals to the appropriate supplier. It additionally affords instructional content material to assist sufferers do issues like put together earlier than a process, recuperate after one, and handle circumstances at residence. This schooling content material spans varied codecs, equivalent to texts, emails, movies and infographics, Bilyew identified.

She mentioned Healthwise, which was based in 1975, “actually constructed” the affected person engagement and schooling business. 

“[Healthwise] has set a gold customary for the standard of the content material, and so they have been extremely modern within the space of affected person schooling. We’re very happy to have the ability to take one of the best of what Healthwise has, mixed with one of the best of what Krames has, and actually create the business main resolution by far for partaking affected person schooling — one which strikes individuals to do the appropriate factor for their very own private care,” Bilyew remarked.

Photograph: mikdam, Getty Pictures