Workplace wellness program company Provant will be adopting Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Twine Health’s AI-assisted health coaching platform for its employee health programs, the companies announced today.
“We’re always looking at ways to better engage our members and help them understand their health risks, and reinforce information that makes them aware and constantly working on their health issues … and our employer customers are looking for ways for us to do that better and more efficiently,” Tom Basiliere, chief information officer for Provant, told MobiHealthNews. “Twine came to the table with not only a sophisticated technology offer but a roadmap that was enticing to us, and fit in with our vision of keeping people healthy and helping them live more healthy and productive lives.”
Twine’s software service consists of a self-management app designed for employees’ daily use, and an infrastructure that allows human health coaches to deliver personalized recommendations directly to users. The system supports care for a number of major chronic conditions, and includes exercise, diet, and medication adherence coaching, among others. By implementing AI and automation into the system, coaches are able to manage three times as many employees as they would without assistance, according to a statement.
“Twine approaches the health conditions of individuals as a journey, as an ongoing conversation that starts with what a person might be ready to work on and ready to talk about,” Basiliere said. “It’s kind of a unique approach in the sense that they don’t assume everyone that has a specific condition is ready to start working on that, but they create the environment for a person to work on what they’re ready for, and over time build to some more advanced and more outcome-based behavior changes.”
Currently, Twine’s platform is being used by 56 workplace health providers and systems that offer wellness programs to hundreds of thousands of employees. This deal with Provant — whose own platform for large employers features biometric screenings, an online wellness portal, seasonal flu shots, health assessments, and other forms of on-site and digital coaching — would bring the coaching service’s reach into the millions.
“Provant’s philosophy of care follows closely with our own, empowering members with tools to take control of their health and achieve their goals with the help of expert coaches,” John Moore, CEO and cofounder of Twine, said in a statement. “Our digital platform will be a very natural extension of Provant’s already exciting offering.”
Basiliere explained that although Provant already offered coaching within its wellness platform, the company was looking for ways to scale the system and improve its capabilities. Although Provant needed their system replaced and coaches retrained within a brief two-month window, Basiliere said that the partnership has been running smoothly.
“It’s been a very tight window, and Twine was very adaptive to our needs both in the on-boarding phase and then supporting us as we get going, and that’s been working out very well,” he said. “We’re a few months in now, and we’re learning as we go, but Twine’s been a great partner from the perspective of having good clinical experience inside the company as well as being a software as a service company and understanding how to develop software in a comprehensive way and a controlled way.”
This latest partnership is hardly a surprise for those following Twine. Earlier this year, Moore noted that his company would be increasing its focus on workplace health providers. In the time since, the company has also announced a deal with onsite wellness and injury prevention coaching company, Wellness Coaches.
