Pregnancy+ app from UK-based Health & Parenting
One year after Philips acquired population health management business Wellcentive, the global healthcare brand has bolstered its parenthood health tech business with Health & Parenting.
The financial terms weren’t disclosed for the acquisition of the London-based developer of healthcare and family-related mobile applications for expectant and new parents. The company’s most popular app, Pregnancy+, has about 12 million downloads from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.
Philips views Health & Parenting as a good match for its uGrow platform to support new parents with smart baby monitor and digital ear thermometer. The deal also gives Philips another avenue to generate insight on the evolving needs of new parents and also provide opportunities for cross-selling across uGrow and other digital health platforms.
“This acquisition fits perfectly in our digital strategy to help expectant and new parents understand and support their baby’s healthy development, through a series of connected digital products with the uGrow application at the core”, said Egbert van Acht, Business Leader Health & Wellness at Philips in a company press release.
The acquisition gives Philips a popular app that could help stimulate interest in a larger platform of connected devices. It’s interesting to see what Kinsa did with what started off as a smart thermometer and companion app. It has integrated its device with Teladoc, used it to collect data to track pandemics and did a licensing deal with Sesame Street.
If one thinks about how a corporate giant like Philips could harness the data millions of new parents provide on Pregnancy+, it could have a big impact on product development to patient engagement plans for this customer base going forward.
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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.
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