UnitedHealth Group Rapidly Assembling a New Digital Platform to Improve Care

UnitedHealth Group (UHG), the United States’ largest health insurer, has acquired DivvyDose, a start-up that helps patients with chronic illness get their medicines delivered in pre-sorted packages, according to a person familiar with the deal.

This transaction follows a number of acquisitions by the company in the digital space to help its Optum business, including:

  • naviHealth, a post-acute care management platform for health plans and providers. naviHealth leverages a combination of analytics, clinical decision-support tools and clinical staff to monitor and guide recovery among post-acute patients.
  • AbleTo, a virtual therapy company providing technology enabled behavioral health care. AbleTo’s structured therapy programs strengthen medical recovery and self-care among members with chronic or complex clinical needs.
  • Vivify Health, a remote patient monitoring platform transforming healthcare by replacing episodic approaches with the market’s most complete, patient-centered, and holistic connected care platform.
  • PatientsLikeMe, a company that helps connect people who have similar health conditions. PatientsLikeMe is the world’s largest personalized health network. 750,000+ people living with 2,900 conditions have generated more than 43 million data points.
  • Rally Health guides patients through every step of their health care journey, helping them understand benefits, find the right care, and meet individual goals.

The most recent acquisition, DivvyDose, is designed to serve people who manage multiple prescription and over-the-counter (OTC) medications. Every 30 days, customers receive a personalized roll of pre-sorted prescription medications, vitamins, and OTC medications with clearly-marked dates and times to make managing them easy.

 

Takeaway: UHG will now add a virtual pharmacy to its OptumRx business, better positioning the company to compete with Amazon’s PillPack