In a growing sign that health insurers are increasingly turning into technology companies, Hartford health insurer Aetna has created a new business unit called Healthagen that will consolidate its health management and information technology companies under one umbrella.
The new unit will include companies Aetna recently acquired to beef up its technology capabilities like iTriage, which provides a health and fitness app for consumers.
The Healthagen unit will also include Aetna’s ActiveHealth Management and Medicity companies.
Joseph M. Zubretsky, Aetna’s senior executive vice president of national businesses, said the company has invested more than $1 billion to “acquire and build a comprehensive collection of health management and health IT solutions to empower consumers and enable clinical integration and population health management.”
Aetna officials say Healthagen will serve providers, employers, payers and consumers by:
- Securely connecting and enabling more than 800 hospitals and 250,000 physicians with Medicity technology to exchange and act on health information
- Helping providers better coordinate, track and monitor patient care
- Advancing new models of value-based, accountable care, including 18 accountable care relationships with leading health systems and more than 65 Medicare Provider Collaborations
- Employing care management programs and services so that consumers receive care designed to meet their unique health care needs, including more than 22 million served by ActiveHealth health management services, including disease management, clinical decision support and personal health records
- Giving providers insight and access to the latest medical evidence for their patients’ health care needs
- Giving consumers convenient and simple mobile and online services that help them make informed health care decisions, manage out-of-pocket costs, and access and manage health care, including more than 8 million people worldwide that have downloaded the iTriage app