Wellness and patient engagement company Sharecare broke the news yesterday that it is teaming up with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota to offer its personalized health platform to commercial customer groups starting in 2019. This comes just a week after Sharecare announced a seperate partnership with retail giant Walmart that will give employees and their families access to the wellness platform and, ideally, improve community health.
“Sharecare is a great match with the health and wellbeing programs we offer at Blue Cross,” Cain A. Hayes, president and chief operating officer of the Health Business for BCBS Minnesota, said in a statement. “Both of our organizations are focused on bringing about real change in people’s health through meaningful experiences and information that inspire action and reward progress. Empowering and encouraging people on their health journeys is at the heart of what we do and is central to our mission of making a healthy difference in people’s lives.”
As part of the agreement Sharecare will be used as BCBS Minnesota’s digital health management offering as part of the payer’s “do.” platform, which helps patients manage health and wellbeing. The “do.” platform also lets businesses and workforces customize the services to fit their needs.
Users will get access to Sharecare services, including the RealAge assessment, which gives people the age of their body instead of their calendar age, and the AskMD symptom checker feature.
On the employer side, the partnership will let companies set customizable reward programs, create wellness challenges, chose health screening options, and provide analysis and deep insights on overall health factors.
As part of last week’s deal with Walmart, the company's employees, their families, alumni, and the community at large will get full access to Sharecare. The online platform will give users tools to track and understand their health. It also allows users to develop an actionable plan towards improving their health and gives participants health trackers, articles, and tips.
This isn’t the first time the retail giant has used digital health to address employee wellness. Four years ago it launched the ZP Challenge, a rewards programs that encourages overall wellbeing in fitness, family, food, and expenses. Now ZP users will get access to Sharecare as a way to provide them with more health tools and wellness programs, Walmart said.
“Given the current state of health in the United States, large employers, in particular, must be willing to deliver their employees with relevant and personalized experiences, and when it comes to making good on that commitment, Walmart bears the gold standard,” Jeff Arnold, cofounder, chairman and CEO of Sharecare, said in a statement. “We look forward to building on the foundation Walmart has laid for its associates by using Sharecare to amplify the improvements they are making in their lives each day and create a whole new value for the currency of good health.”
