Thanks to a $100,000 grant from the philanthropic arm of insurance company Florida Blue, researchers with affiliations to Johns Hopkins Medicine, are launching a study on how tracking devices and apps can help obese teenagers make healthier decisions, according to a Reuters report.
The researchers recently visited a high school in Florida to begin recruiting the 50 teenagers it plans to sign up...
Safeway Health president Dr. Kent Bradley believes healthcare data has arrived. The challenge now for stakeholders, especially employers, is to figure out how to use that data meaningfully.
Safeway Health entered the health market in an unusual way. In 2010, the grocery store chain Safeway was getting so much attention for its novel approaches to employee wellness that the company spun off...
Employee wellness curation platform Jiff raised $18 million in a round led by Venrock with participation from existing investors Aberdare Ventures and Aeris Capital. Jiff has raised $25.8 million to date.
Jiff originally launched with a provider-to-patient education platform, called JiffPad, the company pivoted in June 2013 and now offers a service called The Health Outcomes Marketplace. The...
Verizon has teamed up with smartphone health monitoring startup Ginger.io in a pilot conceived and run by Centerstone Research Institute to create a mobile health intervention that's already been tested in one small study, with larger studies in the works.
Initially, Centerstone launched a three-month pilot of 10 high Medicaid-utilizer patients (those with more than $25,000 in annual healthcare-...
Dallas, Texas-based employee wellness company Viverae has acquired behavioral health company OneHealth for an undisclosed sum. Viverae counts 300 clients in various industries throughout the US that use its health management programs. OneHealth's offerings will bolster Viverae's by allowing users to anonymously support each others' emotional and physical health.
OneHealth offers members 24/7...
Chief executive officers from nine large American companies, healthcare and otherwise, released a 130-page report detailing a number of ways the private sector can help reduce the country's rising healthcare costs, including explaining a lot of the work their own companies are already doing. The CEO Council on Health and Innovation was formed by the Bipartisan Policy Center.
Five CEOS from the...
Digital health accelerator Healthbox has added eight companies to its next accelerator, which will be located in Chicago.
This is the third Chicago-based Healthbox accelerator. Chicago is also home base for Healthbox Global Partners, the parent company of Healthbox since 2013.
Healthbox partnered with a number of companies to launch the class, including insurance company Health Care Service...
Insurance company Health Care Service Corporation (HCSC), which offers insurance plans to residents of Illinois, Montana, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas, has made available its first wellness app for its members, called Centered. The app focuses on activity tracking and meditation.
The app will make use of the M7 and M8 motion coprocessors on Apple's iPhone 5S and newly released iPhone 6,...
Forty eight percent of employers will make telehealth services available to employees, in states where it's legal, in 2015, according to a National Business Group on Health survey of 136 employers representing approximately 7.5 million employees.
Within this group, 33 percent of employers plan to offer these services without incentives or penalties and 15 percent plan to offer the services with...
Health gaming corporate wellness platform Keas raised $7.4 million, according to an SEC filing. This brings the company's total funding to date to at least $32.9 million. Previous investors in the company include Atlantic Ventures and Ignition Partners. Keas was co-founded by the original Google Health chief Adam Bosworth.
Keas' corporate wellness program offers users a social health and wellness...
