Walgreens deal will help HealthPrize scale as it begins working with medical device companies

HealthPrize has crossed a major milestone in a deal with Walgreens that will help the patient engagement and patient education business scale significantly. Walgreens and Rite Aid are merging and if the Federal Trade Commission approves the deal, it will make Walgreens-Rite Aid the largest sales channel for pharmaceutical companies in the U.S. The deal adds to a digital health network Walgreens has cultivated for the past few years.

Walgreens will make Norwalk, Connecticut-based HealthPrize’s medication adherence and education platform available through the drugstore chain’s website, according to a news release. It is geared to supporting pharmaceutical companies. It will be made available to patients filling certain brand-name prescriptions for chronic conditions such as diabetes, the news release said. Healthprize’s “Action Engine” uses gamification and incentives redeemable to motivate patients to learn about their condition, such as quizzes, surveys, daily health tips, medication alerts through email or by text message, refill reminders and medication adherence scorecards.

In a phone interview, HealthPrize CEO and Co-founder Tom Kottler was enthusiastic about the deal. “One of big challenges for digital health opt-in programs is getting people to enroll and when you have the scale of Walgreens, you find ways to get past that problem. Walgreens is the biggest trade channel in the U.S. for life science companies.”

Walgreens plans to gradually roll out the platform, first for diabetes patients in the third quarter, and add more conditions by the end of the year such as people on medication for high cholesterol, depression, asthma and COPD.

The drug store chain partnered with Qualcomm Life last year to create connected device applications for Walgeens’s Bluetooth-enabled blood pressure and blood glucose devices. It also has partnerships with PatientsLikeMe, MDLive and iTriage. Walgreens’s Balance Rewards program spurs members to earn points for participating in health-related programs and helps them track their progress toward a goal. Earlier this month, Adam Pellegrini, who led Walgreens digital health programs, left the retailer to join Fitbit. Walgreens later promoted Greg Orr to fill Pellegrini’s former post.

Kottler added that it has begun working with medical device companies. One example is a collaboration with Noble, which develops product and training programs to help users of autoinjectors, pre-filled syringes and respiratory devices get over their anxiety of using these products, and West Pharmaceutical, which specializes in self-injection devices. He said HealthPrize developed a program extension for its platform to help people learn how to use these devices and get data from them.