Payer

By  Aditi Pai 04:10 am February 11, 2014
Employee health and wellness platform Keas announced new customers this morning including Target, Wix, Safeway and American Axle & Manufacturing Holdings. Existing Keas customers include Pfizer, Salesforce, Reed Elsevier, The Cheesecake Factory, and BAE Systems. Target is offering the Keas platform to all employees, not just those who are eligible for the company's healthcare benefits. Target...
By  Brian Dolan 06:59 am February 4, 2014
Four years ago Congress created a new Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation as part of its Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The Innovation Center's purpose was “to test innovative payment and service delivery models to reduce program expenditures... while preserving or enhancing quality of care.” Congress has allotted $10 billion to support the Innovation Center for its first ten...
By  Brian Dolan 06:13 am February 3, 2014
AARP seeks health startups for LivePitch event in Boston: AARP is hosting an event in Boston in May that will include an Innovation@50+ LivePitch session for digital health startups focused on the "50 and over" population. The event is looking for both very early stage startups in the "concept phase" as well as those that are a bit further along and have raised money but not more than $5 million...
By  Aditi Pai 04:30 am February 3, 2014
Two University of New Mexico-trained physicians and a business school professor launched an app, Get Covered New Mexico, to spread information to New Mexico residents about getting covered through the Affordable Care Act. Professor at the University of New Mexico Nick Flor, Dr. Erin Corriveau and Dr. Kate McCalmont decided to develop the app after Corriveau attended a community meeting in a...
By  Jonah Comstock 11:13 am January 31, 2014
Aetna will now reimburse for iRhythm's ZIO Patch, a continuous long-term heart monitor worn on an adhesive patch. The insurer recently updated its Clinical Policy Bulletin on cardiac event monitors, upgrading the ZIO Patch from "experimental and investigational" to "medically necessary" for certain conditions. In particular, Aetna will reimburse for the ZIO Patch either "to evaluate syncope or...
By  Aditi Pai 06:43 am January 30, 2014
As a trend, healthcare price transparency has started off strong this year. In a recent interview, price transparency tool Medlio's CEO David Brooks told MobiHealthNews people are no longer on preferred provider organization plans as much as they have been in the past. As a result, instead of simply paying a copay, users are now on high deductible health plans and are starting to care more about...
By  Jonah Comstock 05:09 am January 30, 2014
Popular fitness tracking app company Endomondo is branching out into corporate wellness and building a new platform for employees around its Endomondo Sports Tracker app. "Endomondo spent years refining modern technology to motivate people to be more active," Endomondo CEO Mette Lykke told MobiHealthNews in an email. "During that time, Endomondo worked with various entities to learn how the...
By  Brian Dolan 05:02 am January 27, 2014
According to a recent report from Chilmark Research, healthcare insurance companies -- or payers -- are increasingly partnering with biometric device companies. The firm calls to biometric activity tracking as the "latest fad" in payer adoption of consumer technology. Chilmark also noted a decline in the number of smartphone app launches from health plans, which launched more apps in 2012 than in...
By  Brian Dolan 06:11 am January 23, 2014
Earlier this month the Federal Trade Commission published a notice that granted UnitedHealth Group a preliminary green light to acquire Audax Health Solutions. These notices are granted both for outright acquisitions and for larger investments that include a large stake in the company. Since neither UnitedHealth Group nor Audax Health has commented yet, it's unclear which is in the works, but the...
By  Aditi Pai 10:38 am January 21, 2014
Premera Blue Cross has launched its nutrition-focused online platform and app, called Serve it Up!, in partnership with social platform maker Wellness Layers and nutrition guidance program Guiding Stars. "We are pleased to build systems such as Serve it Up! that focus on something as universal and imperative as good nutrition," Wellness Layers CEO Amir Kishon said in a statement. "We leveraged...