Dive Brief:
- FitBit has launched a new service, FitBit Group Health, for corporate wellness partners, weight management leaders, insurers, and clinical researchers.
- In addition, the company has introduced Wellness Insighter, which provides comparative data for corporate wellness leaders to validate their investments against industry peers.
- Group Health will provide software and services in four areas: Corporate wellness, weight management, insurance and health research.
Dive Insight:
Wellness Insighter will be available to FitBit's Group Health customers later this year and the data it provides can be used to evaluate and optimize wellness programs.
FitBit's chief business officer, Woody Scal, said in a statement, the launch of Group Health will enable the company to integrate more into the population health sector.
The company said is has added more than 1,000 corporate wellness customers over the past few years and some of these include Barclays, Target and Emory University. FitBit also has partnerships with health insurers (Anthem, Premera Blue Cross) and weight management leaders (Weight Watchers) and FitBit has been used in more than 100 research studies with academic institutions like the Mayo Clinic.
Wellness and population health are incresingly hot topics. Employer-related costs increase when employees aren't healthy and/or obese. Obesity can curb productivity and affect insurance rates/premiums. Assessing a work force's overhealth can help understand productivity health. More than 70% of employers offered a general wellness program as part of their benefits package last year, according to a 2015 report by the Society for Human Resource Management, up from 58% in 2008.