New York-based healthcare IT company Medivo has acquired WellApps, developer of mobile health app GI Monitor, that helps people with Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD), Crohn's Disease and Ulcerative Colitis. No financial details of the deal were released. WellApps co-founder and CEO Brett Shamosh will join Medivo as VP of Product Development.
WellApps' GI Monitor will be rebranded and become integrated into Medivo Monitor platform for patients and the Medivo PatientPath platform for physicians. GI Monitor aims to help patients more easily and accurately log symptoms and provide this data to their care providers. It also enables patients to see correlations between symptoms, meals and medications. Specifically, the GI Monitor app helps users track stool number, form, blood, and urgency in addition to pain levels and stress levels to determine a quality of life score on a scale of 1 to 10. Shamosh shared preliminary results with MobiHealthNews from an small study the company did last year. The app will retain its core feature set, according to the company's press release.
Shamosh co-founded WellApps with Dr. Edward Shin and Paolo Teodorani. Shin and Teodorani will not be joining Medivo. Shamosh told MobiHealthNews in an email that Teodorani will likely continue his work developing the app on a consulting basis since he runs his own Italy-based development shop.
Medivo plans to leverage WellApps mobile health experience to move into other chronic condition management offerings:
"Medivo's free services and tools are revolutionizing the way physicians and patients leverage lab testing to make better decisions leading to improved health," Sundeep Bhan, CEO of Medivo stated in a press release. "WellApps complements Medivo's growth strategy and offers us immediate access to the mobile health space. In addition, this acquisition will increase our ability to address a broader set of medical conditions, which will have a positive impact on our patients and physicians."
More on the deal in the press release below:
PRESS RELEASE: NEW YORK, Mar 07, 2012 -- Medivo, Inc., a New York-based healthcare IT company that provides invaluable support services to patients and physician practices, today announced that it acquired WellApps, Inc., a mobile health innovator that develops disease management applications for patients with chronic illnesses.
WellApps' application GI Monitor is the leading mobile disease-management platform for patients with Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD), Crohn's Disease and Ulcerative Colitis. The app allows patients to easily and accurately log symptoms and provide this data to their doctors for optimal treatment. In addition, patients can see correlations between symptoms, meals and medications. GI Monitor will be fully integrated into the Medivo Monitor platform for patients and the Medivo PatientPath platform for physicians.
"Medivo's free services and tools are revolutionizing the way physicians and patients leverage lab testing to make better decisions leading to improved health," said Sundeep Bhan, CEO of Medivo. "WellApps complements Medivo's growth strategy and offers us immediate access to the mobile health space. In addition, this acquisition will increase our ability to address a broader set of medical conditions, which will have a positive impact on our patients and physicians."
WellApps was co-founded by Edward Shin MD, Brett Shamosh, and Paolo Teodorani. Shamosh, a long-time Ulcerative Colitis patient, will join Medivo as VP, Product Development. "I'm extremely excited about the opportunity to integrate WellApps into Medivo's existing platform and offer a suite of powerful interactive tools to patients and physicians, all aimed at improved quality of life," Shamosh said.
WellApps' applications offer users the ability to socialize in real-time as they track their conditions, making GI Monitor one of the most active global social communities for IBD patients. GI Monitor is free to patients and available in the iTunes App Store, Android Market and at www.wellapps.com . The app helps patients by improving monitoring and reporting of symptoms, medication compliance, and diet. Patients can also access interactive charts to monitor correlations between symptoms, medications, diet and lifestyle. GI Monitor can collect and compile patient data into easy-to-read reports for physicians, which result in optimal patient treatment and reduced periods of active disease.
About Medivo
Headquartered in New York, NY, Medivo is dedicated to helping save and improve lives through faster and easier access to quality health care. Medivo's free services and tools are revolutionizing the way physicians and patients leverage lab testing to make better decisions leading to improved health. Medivo enables physicians to improve care with tools that identify gaps in patient lab testing and treatment, increase testing compliance, and provide fast and convenient access to a network of thousands of labs. Medivo enables patients to better manage their health and have more meaningful interactions with their doctors through access to testing and monitoring tools, easy-to-understand explanations of lab results, and relevant education information. Medivo raised $7M in Series A funding in 2011 led by Safeguard Scientifics, Inc. SFE -0.31% . For more information, visit our website at www.medivo.com , Follow Us on Twitter @gomedivo or Like Us on Facebook.
SOURCE: Medivo, Inc.
