Personalized wellness company Welltok has inked a multi-year deal with a major Midwest health provider and insurer.

The deal will give Welltok access to the 1.5 million people insured by HealthPartners, which operates in Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, and Wisconsin. Welltok employs a database of 270 million Americans across 800 data elements to identify and reach consumers most likely to benefit from behavior change, according to Dan Spirek, general manager of Welltok’s  CaféWell Health Optimization Platform. Welltok acquired that database when it purchased analytics company Predilytics in 2015, Spirek said in a phone interview.

CaféWell helps population managers customize health “itineraries” for patients. Until now, Welltok’s customers have been employers or insurers. Although HealthPartners is both, the not-for-profit is rolling out Welltok’s service to insured members first through 2018, according to Joel Spoonheim, HealthPartners’ director of health promotion. The program launched April 3 to 157,000 small-group plan members. The company plans to add more than 200,000 in large-group plans in 2018.

HealthPartners had been using an in-house online wellness platform successfully for 10 years but wanted to offer patients the personalized options that Welltok provides. The company’s platform will allow HealthPartners to integrate new technology as it develops and best practices as they evolve, Spoonheim said in a phone interview. Welltok leaders’ experience in working with health plans tipped the scales in its favor.

“Every employer that I’ve met with so far is beyond ecstatic and excited about the capabilities,” Spoonheim added. “Everybody understands that healthcare as a whole needs to move to this direction of  being personalized.”

Most health and wellness platforms serve up generic suggestions for patients to choose from rather than addressing their specific concerns, according to Spirek.  CaféWell takes into account each patient’s age, gender, income level, and health concerns, such as high blood pressure, to deliver the support that patient needs, he said.

To effect behavior change and gain a competitive advantage in the market, HealthPartners targets specific health and wellness needs to put the best evidence-based content in front of the largest number of people using multi-channel communications, Spirek said.

“It gives them the ability, it gives them the control to design and build the programs at their discretion,” he added. “The whole intent of the platform is to deliver not only our content but the content that our plan sponsors believe are important to our groups and our members.”

In addition to Predilytics, Welltok acquired multichannel healthcare communications firm Silverlink and children’s fitness initiative Zamzee in 2015. It also acquired certain assets of competitor Keas in August 2016 and brought some of its employees on board, according to Spirek. Keas was a wellness company that focused on the employer market.

The company has been “very aggressive” in integrating Predilytics’ and Silverlink’s capabilities and has been working to sell them to customers as a new market offering, Spirek said. He declined to reveal how many partners Welltok has or whether the company plans to go public.

Photo: DrAfter123, Getty Images