Dive Brief:
-
Mobile health software company Wildflower Health acquired the Circle Women’s Health Platform, mobile health technology created by Providence St. Joseph Health.
-
Hospital clinicians created Circle, which is integrated in the system’s EMR and includes content, tools and trackers. It also includes an app with information for parents and offers resources focused on children’s health resources, including breastfeeding and teenager issues.
- PSJH also signed an enterprise-wide commercial deal with Wildflower, as well as Providence Ventures participating in Wildflower’s Series C financing.
Dive Insight:
Providence St. Joseph is not unique with an internal arm testing and potentially commercializing new products. UPMC, Mayo Clinic and other big systems also house similar units.
The mobile-based software is aimed at female patients and their families, including reminders about immunizations, doctor visits and preventive health.
Circle is available in nearly 30 hospitals in the PSJH network. It’s also in health systems like Sutter Health. Amy Compton-Phillips, executive vice president and chief clinical officer at PSJH, said in a statement that Circle offers “a trusted clinical voice from pregnancy through delivery and into pediatrics, and soon on to women's health.”
The deal is the second involving an “incubated solution” from the health system's innovation team following Xealth's spinout and funding by DFJ in June 2017.
Providence St. Joseph said selling Circle is part of its “strategy to develop novel solutions to healthcare-provider needs, scale them at PSJH, commercialize these innovations and create value for PSJH beyond the immediate health system.”
Wildflower’s client contracts represent more than 45 million health plan members, and it also works with health systems including Dignity Health.