A new company announced its launch on Monday at the ViVE conference in Los Angeles — one that seeks to bridge the gap between traditional healthcare and wellness.
The startup, named Vale Health, is a health and wellness marketplace platform backed by a consortium of 16 health systems.
“Sixteen big health systems have come together to effectively form a consortium to support Vale and take us to market. For those health systems, we help them extend their trusted reputation and hard-earned healthcare brand into the more common parts of health and wellness that people experience every day,” CEO Bill Furlong said in an interview.
The health and wellness space is becoming “increasingly important” to consumers, he noted. This space encompasses things that people typically don’t seek medical attention for, such as getting better sleep, maintaining a healthy weight, alleviating muscle pain or solving digestive issues. People usually don’t go to the doctor to improve these things, but they can still have a major impact on a person’s wellbeing, Furlong remarked.
Vale’s marketplace platform aims to help health systems increase patient engagement by connecting people with various products and services related to these types of issues, he explained.
Furlong pointed out that the health and wellness market is getting more and more crowded with solutions. Vale’s marketplace is designed to help consumers cut through that noise.
“There are some super responsible, reliable and great-performing solutions in the space. But as consumers, everyone knows that the buyer has to be selective and be careful. And we know that there are some solutions that aren’t going to be as effective — so people need a resource for making good decisions more easily. That’s what we aspire to do for the consumer,” Furlong said.
When consumers use the platform, Vale guides them to an assessment so it can learn more about their health concerns. This helps Vale direct users to personalized product and service recommendations, Furlong noted.
Say a user wants to improve their sleep. People’s sleep problems can take on a lot of different shapes — for example, they could be someone who struggles with anxiety spirals before bed, a night shift worker who can’t seem to sleep while it’s light out, or a person who lives on a busy city street that stays noisy throughout all hours. That is important information that can play a role in whether a product will be effective or not, Furlong explained.
That information enables Vale to determine which sleep products it should bring to a user’s attention. Sleep products currently available on the marketplace include weighted blankets, noise machines, anti-allergen bedding, humidifiers, nasal strips, supplements and essential oils.
“We do the heavy lifting of going through lots of the products that are available in the space and select the ones that are really worthy of the patient’s consideration,” Furlong declared.
The Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin health network is the first of Vale’s 16 founding health systems partners to go live with the platform.
Picture: fizkes, Getty Images
