Telehealth Company Amwell Acquires SilverCloud Health, Conversa Health | Healthcare Innovation
Telehealth company Amwell (NYSE: AMWL), has signed agreements to acquire SilverCloud Health, a digital mental health platform, and Conversa Health, which automates virtual healthcare.
Boston-based Amwell said that both SilverCloud Health and Conversa Health have shown they can enable a more efficient blend of in-person, virtual and digital care, and in turn have helped to lower operational and healthcare costs, as well as advanced care outcomes.
The aggregate purchase price for SilverCloud and Conversa is approximately $320 million and Amwell expects to fund the transactions using a mix of stock and cash.
The company said SilverCloud Health delivers a range of digital cognitive behavioral health programs that are evidence-based and clinically validated. These programs have shown results equivalent to face-to-face care for the 1 in 5 people with a diagnosable mental health condition and have helped over 65 percent of patient, member, and employee users to experience significant decreases in depression and anxiety symptoms. It is used globally by more than 300 organizations including Kaiser-Permanente, Optum, Providence Health and over 80 percent of the U.K.’s National Health Service mental health services.
Conversa uses automated patient interactions to ensure patients stay on track before and after live or virtual visits. It works with healthcare organizations such as Northwell Health, UCSF Health, UNC Health, University Hospitals and Prisma Health, to remotely manage and engage patients by delivering configurable, automated text-based conversations to support a wide range of clinical needs – from pre-admission patient education and preparedness to post-acute monitoring, to chronic care management and more. Amwell will leverage Conversa Health’s proprietary patient profiling and health signals engine and library of evidence-based digital pathways to advance initiatives aimed at longitudinal care, clinical quality, and population health.
“We believe that future care delivery will inevitably blend in-person, virtual and digital care experiences; and as such, we are uniquely building a global platform to support such advanced, coordinated care,” said Ido Schoenberg, Chairman and Co-CEO of Amwell, in a statement. “By integrating SilverCloud Health and Conversa Health into our platform we are demonstrating Amwell’s fundamental and repeatable design to continually scale digital healthcare services across the different sites of care. These acquisitions will amplify the presence and reach of care teams and reaffirm that as the needs of the healthcare marketplace evolve, so too will the Amwell platform.”
The combined company will seek to pioneer new digital care workflows and programs to improve patient engagement and care team reach, as well as to advance care delivery outcomes. Initial efforts will focus on virtual care automation and patient companionship to advance longitudinal care, behavioral health, and other specialty and chronic care segments.
Amwell said it would expand its current client base to include hospital, health system, health plan and employer clients of Conversa Health and SilverCloud Health. The geographical footprint of SilverCloud Health will also help Amwell to accelerate its global growth plans, specifically within the United Kingdom and Ireland.