Welltok, a provider of a population health management services and consumer health incentives, is growing again through acquisition and new fundraising.
The Denver-based company announced Thursday that it has purchased healthcare consumer communications firm Silverlink and raised $45 million in fresh venture capital. Georgian Partners, EDBI — the investment arm of the Singapore Economic Development Board — and Flare Capital led the investment, which Welltok Chief Marketing Officer Michelle Snyder called a “Series D-2” round.
Silverlink, headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts, helps health plans reach out to their members, particularly older adults. “Silverlink is really good at multichannel, targeted consumer engagement,” Snyder said. “It brings us new technology capabilities and new markets,” as Silverlink has a history of working with Medicare and Medicaid populations.
According to Snyder, Silverlink has conducted more than 80,000 health engagement programs and delivered an astounding 1 billion communications in its 13 years in business. Many of these communications are through “offline” channels, such as interactive voice response, text messaging and direct mail, Snyder said. To date, Welltok mostly has communicated with consumers over the Internet.
“We were looking for ways to round out how we reach people,” Snyder said. Silverlink determines the best modalities for getting in touch with each participant.
“We now have the right communication channel to get them to engage with those [healthcare] resources,” she explained.
This acquisition brings Welltok one step closer to realizing the vision of its signature CaféWell platform for what the company calls “health optimization.”
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
In May, Welltok purchased healthcare data-mining company Predilytics. A month and a half ago, the company bought children’s activity program Zamzee. “We now can go from kids to seniors,” Snyder said.
Welltok CEO Jeff Margolis and Silverlink CEO Stan Nowak discuss the acquisition in this video.
Photo: Vimeo user Welltok
