A health IT business is ringing in the new year with a name change and a restructured company after ending its insurance carrier business in 2014. Goodbye SeeChange Health Solutions, hello HealthMine. In a phone interview with CEO Bryce Williams, who joined the company a couple of months ago, he talked about some of the company’s plans for 2015.
“Being a startup insurance carrier was never easy” for the San Francisco-based company and adverse selection made it even tougher, Williams said. In September, Colorado suspended SeeChange Health Insurance’s license amidst questions over financial insolvency.
Its reorganized business focuses on its strengths, according to Williams. Its core business supports health insurers and employer wellness plans by automating member information aggregated from claims data, lab test results, biometric information from fitness trackers and monitoring devices and delivering it to members. It also uses analytics tools to assess users’ risk of developing a chronic condition such as Type 2 diabetes and help them track their progress on health goals.
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A December poll by the company indicated that half of the 806 consumers surveyed said their wellness program did not offer automatic updates of data from their monitoring devices, doctors visits, and biometrics.
Williams said in a statement about the name change that the company “is moving wellness from a game where one size fits none, to mass personalization.”
Employer wellness programs have not done a great job of sustaining employees interest and often seem like they are doing more to help companies managing their healthcare costs rather than offer services that help members easily access meaningful information.
In addition to working with employer wellness plans and insurers, the company has also collaborated with telemedicine startups such as Doctor on Demand as part of its data aggregation service.
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Prior to HealthMine, Williams worked for Towers Watson where he was managing director for exchange solutions after it acquired Extend Health in 2012. Williams co-founded Extend Health, which ran the largest private Medicare exchange and provided defined contribution benefit program to employees and retirees.
HealthMine’s goal of making employer wellness plans more effective is shared by several companies who are using a variety of tools in their efforts such as machine learning, gaming and predictive analytics.
