Digital Health Startup, Wellth, Raises $5.1 Million in Financing Round to Help Insurers and Health Systems Achieve Better Patient Adherence and Outcomes
New York, NY (September 13, 2018) — Digital health startup Wellth Inc. announced today the completion of a financing round of $5.1 million. The investor group includes multinational pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim’s Venture Fund, large multinational life insurers (AXA Venture Partners and New York Life Insurance Company), and leading insurance brokerage firm NFP’s Venture Fund with additional participation from Leonard Schaeffer (former Chairman of Anthem), CD-Venture, the Partnership Fund for New York City, and Yabeo. The new investment round will support Wellth over the next two years as they continue to expand the team to meet growing demand from the marketplace and execute on strategic goals.
Wellth works with insurers and risk-bearing providers to motivate patient behavior change and better adherence to treatment through the use of financial incentives and behavioral economics strategies. Wellth’s solution is served through an intuitive and painless mobile patient experience that includes daily contextual and personalized nudges as well as quick ‘check-ins’ for daily medications. The company focuses on better understanding and improving patient behaviors in costly chronic diseases where poor patient adherence is a major driver of preventable hospitalizations, readmissions, and other costs including Type 2 Diabetes, Congestive Heart Failure, Cardiovascular Disease, COPD, Asthma, and Behavioral Health. Within its existing implementations, Wellth has demonstrated adherence rates of approximately 90%, which is compared to an average baseline of 50% (World Health Organization, 2003). This has been supported by improved health outcome measurements.
“We are looking forward to working closely with our investors in this round to identify new opportunities within health insurance, life insurance, health systems and the pharmaceutical industry,” said Wellth CEO and co-founder Matt Loper. “We hope to use these new avenues to establish a wider range of use cases to improve patient health and drive down costs for insurers and health systems.”
Debbie Lin, Executive Director of Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund added, “We are excited by the results that Wellth has delivered in its existing patient populations and look forward to exploring how the solution can be scaled across additional markets and disease states. Our investment in Wellth is important to Boehringer Ingelheim’s mission to continuously seek value through innovation in improving the lives of patients and their families.”
Wellth previously completed a $2 million seed funding round in 2016, led by AXA Venture Partners. Since then, Wellth has been recognized by awards from the Heritage Provider Network, American Heart Association, American College of Cardiology, and Accenture, and leading media outlets such as the Telemedicine Magazine, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal.
About Wellth: Wellth helps insurers and risk-bearing healthcare providers better understand their populations, improve customer health and retention, and lower costs, through a mobile first, financial incentive focused behavior change platform. The company’s mission is to help ensure the adoption and success of value-based care. The Wellth Advisory Board includes healthcare thought-leaders and industry experts such as Dr. Mark Fendrick, a professor at the University of Michigan who is widely viewed as the creator of value-based care, Larry Hausner, the former head of the American Diabetes Association and Michael Laskoff, the former CEO and co-founder of behavior change company, Ableto.
