For a company that has made 10 acquisitions in its six years of existence, the enormity of Sharecare’s latest purchase is hard to understate. The integration of Nashville, Tennessee-based Healthways population health unit will triple the size of its business, adding 1,700 staff.
In a phone interview with Sharecare co-founder and CEO Jeff Arnold, he acknowledged that although Healthways has made job cuts in the past 24 months, there could be some more in the future. “We think we are getting a lot of great skill sets with this acquisition,” Arnold said. “We will not be rationalizing to a material degree.”
He added that Sharecare beat several companies vying to buy the Healthways unit. “The way we won this transaction from other bidders was confidence in our technology-enabling platform…Healthways had all this amazing outcomes work but it needed to be technology enabled.”
The Healthways deal continues the momentum from a joint venture by Sharecare with Florida Blue parent company GuideWell. The agreements with GuideWell and Healthways will lead to a massive roll out of Sharecare’s health and wellness app to millions of clients’ members and employees from companies such as AT&T, Lockheed Martin, FedEx, and HMSA next year. The app provides access to Sharecare services such as a health risk assessment, the RealAge test, symptom checker, AskMD, health coach, and stress management technology. Services from Healthways will be added such as an intensive cardiac rehabilitation program intended to reverse heart disease.
Arnold credited the consumerization trend in healthcare, enabled by smartphones, with fueling Sharecare’s growth. He also noted the smartphone’s importance in enabling digital health innovation and deal flow.
Arnold said that where Sharecare’s supporters see its value is the way the company eschews piecing together point solutions that “Frankenstein a solution” in favor of a platform that can integrate multiple services. He noted that Healthways had 12 websites and outsources a lot of its technology. That will change with this deal.
Arnold founded WebMD 18 years ago, so when he was asked to comment on his outlook for the rest of the year regarding digital health deals he included that milestone in his vision of the future.
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.
“We will see more innovation in healthcare in the next 18 months than in the past 18 years because smartphones have given us this vessel. I think you will continue to see a whole lot of activity in this space.”
