Health Tech, Payers

CVS builds out digital health program with five more companies

CVS Caremark added five new companies to its Point Solution Management Service, which it launched last year to make it easier for businesses to implement digital health tools. CVS Caremark CMO Sree Chaguturu shared more about the PBM’s plans for digital health.

Last year, CVS Caremark launched a program to make it easier for health plans to implement digital health tools. Since then, it has steadily added a stream of companies to its new Point Solution Management Service, including Livongo, Hinge Health and Hello Heart.

On Wednesday, CVS added another five companies, focused on weight loss and mental health. They include:

  • Daylight, an app to help users manage worry and anxiety
  • Vida, a startup that offers personalized health coaching and therapy
  • Naturally Slim, an online weight loss program
  • Weight Watchers, which has built out its own digital plans
  • And Kurbo, a program designed by Weight Watchers to help children and teens make healthy lifestyle choices.

CVS Caremark CMO Sree Chaguturu shared more about his long-term vision for the program.

“There’s been an explosion of investment and development in digital health applications and solutions,” he said. “But there have been a couple of challenges: how do you know which ones have an impact and are high quality? How do you pay for them? … Those pain points are what we’re trying to address in Point Solution Management.”

Through this model, Chaguturu said health plans can pay for digital health solutions based on how many of their members use a service as opposed to a flat access fee.

Caremark also vets the solutions by looking more closely at their clinical claims and supporting data, as well as conducting a security and business review of each solution.

“We don’t see these solutions as replacing clinical care but as an adjunct and supportive to help patients in self-management,” he said.

Pharmacy benefit managers have recently begun taking a closer look at digital health companies as an adjuvant to traditional medicines. Last year, Express Scripts launched its first digital health formulary, with solutions from Livongo, Omada Health, Propeller and SilverCloud.

Whether these programs will create more widespread use of digital health tools remains to be seen, but it’s a promising first step to help bridge some of the practical gaps toward adoption.

Photo credit:  exdez, Getty Images

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