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Virgin Pulse, the leading global provider of tech-enabled solutions focused on improving the health and wellbeing of its members, today announced that it has completed its acquisition of Welltok, the award-winning health activation company. Combining Welltok’s activation engine with Virgin Pulse’s daily engagement platform will drive better health outcomes and cost reductions for the companies’ combined 4,100 global employer, health plan and health system clients.
“This acquisition is the culmination of years of work to establish a game-changing approach to improving health and reducing costs for employers, health plans and health systems,” said Chris Michalak, CEO of Virgin Pulse. “Combining our organisations will allow us to optimise the health of millions by keeping them continually engaged and activated, which will ultimately reduce costs for clients, members, consumers, and patients. Integrating Welltok’s personalisation and analytics capabilities into Homebase for Health® will deliver exponentially more value for our clients and their respective populations. In the near term, we will be identifying quick wins out the gate for our clients and consumers, scaling existing programmes and introducing a superior activation engine.”
Virgin Pulse is widely recognised for delivering digital and live solutions that foster long-term behavior changes by engaging users in cultivating daily habits that improve outcomes across all aspects of their health and wellbeing. Welltok is known for activating people at the individual level by combining social determinants of health data with robust predictive analytics capabilities while leveraging multiple communication channels (text/SMS, email, interactive voice response (IVR) calls, social media, etc.) to maximise reach.
Welltok’s proprietary activation engine is focused on motivating consumers, employees, patients, and members to complete targeted actions like participating in a mental health programme, refilling a medication, or closing a gap in care. Delivering these capabilities as part of Virgin Pulse’s Homebase for Health® will create a more personalised user experience and expedite outcomes and cost savings for clients and consumers by making it easier to initiate and complete meaningful actions that improve health and wellbeing.
With this acquisition, Virgin Pulse will introduce the industry’s first end-to-end engagement and activation platform that supports clients, members, and consumers across the entire health continuum by:
- Leveraging the industry’s most comprehensive consumer database for 275 million lives and over 1,000 predictive analytics models that target individuals with up to 90% accuracy, based on risk, receptivity, and likelihood to take action via various outreach modalities. This comprehensive database is a powerful tool that can help employers, health plans and health systems generate social determinants of health insights to proactively address and reduce health disparities and close care gaps across diverse populations, including Medicare Advantage and Managed Medicaid members who are at increased risk.
- Delivering personalised, digital-first health solutions that combine technology, gamification, behavior science, live specialist support and a robust ecosystem into a unified, seamless experience to engage users in improving their health and wellbeing every day.
- Targeting activation across a broad range of individuals including employees, patients, consumers, and health plan members, including Medicare Advantage and Managed Medicaid populations, to drive tangible health outcomes through multi-channel outreach and motivating them with integrated incentives. This “surround-sound” activation, when amplified through a platform that users interact with on a daily basis, acts as an engagement multiplier and is a key driver of health and wellbeing outcomes.
Financial details of the transaction have not been disclosed. Virgin Pulse is backed by Marlin Equity Partners, a global investment firm with over $7.7 billion of capital under management. Evercore and Lazard acted as financial advisors, and Kirkland & Ellis LLP served as legal advisor to Virgin Pulse. UBS Securities LLC acted as financial advisor and Shearman & Sterling LLP served as legal advisor to Welltok.
About Virgin Pulse
Virgin Pulse is the leading global provider of health and wellbeing solutions designed to drive outcomes and reduce costs by enabling better decision-making across the full care continuum — from prevention and wellbeing to pre-chronic and chronic disease management to episodic and acute care. Featuring the industry’s only true Homebase for Health®, a personalised ecosystem where Virgin Pulse clients and members can access, navigate and interact with their health, wellbeing and benefits in one, trusted and familiar place, Virgin Pulse’s solutions fuse high-tech, high-touch, predictive analytics, AI and data to unify and simplify health and wellbeing. Today, thousands of organisations and over 14 million users in more than 190 countries are using Virgin Pulse to change their lives – and businesses – for good. For more tips and insights, connect with us on Twitter or LinkedIn.
About Welltok
Welltok drives consumer actions that matter. Only Welltok can predict with up to 90% accuracy people’s needs and their likelihood to take action, and engage them with integrated multi-channel outreach to maximise results. By delivering personalised content and resources, Welltok ensures more individuals take critical actions like scheduling an annual check-up, selecting insurance coverage or refilling medications. As the award-winning consumer activation company, healthcare organisations and others trust Welltok to connect with their populations in meaningful ways.