American Well Introduces the Exchange, Connecting Telehealth Supply and Demand Online

Cleveland Clinic, Nemours Children’s Health System and LiveHealth® Online are the first organizations to enter the Exchange to redistribute and share healthcare services online

BOSTON (May 17, 2016) – American Well, a national telehealth technology and services company, today announced its newest enterprise telehealth service, the Exchange, and the first American Well partners to enter it – Cleveland Clinic, Nemours Children’s Health System and LiveHealth® Online. The Exchange allows healthcare organizations, for the first time, to redistribute their services online to new patient populations.

“The Exchange breaks down silos of healthcare delivery and connects every stakeholder in the industry – those who seek care, deliver care, and pay for it – to make great, trusted healthcare more accessible,” said Dr. Roy Schoenberg, CEO, co-founder, American Well.

Added Dr. Schoenberg, “We want to do for healthcare what Amazon did for book stores initially, and online retail, ultimately, which is to establish a national platform on which online healthcare runs. Importantly this platform is not just about connecting consumers to more doctors. Rather, we can connect consumers with the best provider brands across the United States as part of a national, virtual healthcare system.”

For many years American Well’s partners have built best-in-class telehealth programs that leverage their unique brands, provider expertise, clinical services, technologies, and unique ties to their local communities. These partners have typically fallen into one of two categories – supply generators (organizations that supply healthcare services, such as a hospital or health system) and demand generators (organizations that generate consumer demand, such as a health insurer or employer).

With the Exchange, the virtual barriers between the supply and demand generators and their distinct telehealth services are lifted. Now, these organizations can connect and exchange their services with one another, instantly, online. As such, a new opportunity emerges for healthcare providers looking to ‘package’ up care and population programs into telehealth ‘products’ (e.g. programs for hypertension, diabetes, cancer, Parkinson’s) and market and distribute them to payers and employers –all through the Exchange.

Healthcare leaders operating on American Well’s technology that have already entered the Exchange to take advantage of this new mode of redistributing care delivery to new patient populations include:

• Cleveland Clinic and LiveHealth® Online: Cleveland Clinic will begin offering its services on the LiveHealth® Online platform, a telehealth service for live, video consults with a provider to obtain diagnosis and receive treatment for common urgent care conditions, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Consumers who access LiveHealth® Online in Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania can connect with Cleveland Clinic Nurse Practitioners for live video consults on-demand. This is a premium experience for consumers, connecting them with one of the leading institutions in care delivery.

• Nemours Children’s Health System and Amwell^TM: Nemours Children’s Health System, headquartered in Florida, is one of the nation’s leading pediatric health systems. Nemours CareConnect is a service that leverages American Well technology to offer pediatric video consults in Delaware, Florida and Pennsylvania. Through the Exchange, consumers in Florida who use American Well’s consumer telehealth platform, Amwell, will have access to Nemours’ board-certified pediatricians 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Later this year, Nemours will expand this service to Delaware and Pennsylvania.

The Exchange is made possible through advancements in technology, telehealth adoption and a favorable regulatory climate. American Well’s robust technology platform and sophisticated switchboard engine operate ‘under the hood’ of the Exchange. In February 2016, American Well also introduced the first Mobile Telehealth Software Development Kit (SDK) which lets organizations plug telehealth capabilities directly into their own consumer-facing mobile apps. With the Exchange, these consumer-facing apps can now tap directly into services from American Well’s partners.

As the technology advances and more consumers seek virtual doctor visits, so too does the number of healthcare organizations adopting new telehealth services and making for a rich online ecosystem for collaboration. In American Well’s network alone there are: more than 40 health systems; more than 40 independent health plans; and thousands of employers – all of which can now enter the Exchange.  Today more than 100 million consumers have access to American Well technology through its work with these organizations.

The regulatory climate is also becoming increasingly favorable to cross-pollination of healthcare services, across state lines. In 2015, the Federation of State Medical Boards introduced a new, expedited pathway to licensure for qualified physicians who wish to practice in multiple states, called the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact. The process to obtain expedited licensing is coming in summer 2016, after which multistate telemedicine licenses will be issued to any doctor who wants it. This means that provider organizations entering the Exchange and redistributing their services in other geographies can expect expedited, multistate licensure for their physicians.

For more information about the Exchange please visit www.americanwell.com/exchange.