How does HealthTap make money?

The app charges users to get access to premium features, as well as for its enterprise services

There are a lot of healthtech companies out there that attempt to tackle individual aspects of wellness. Some are meant to educate, others are meant to help prevent disease and others help connect patients with their doctor. HealthTap, however, is different: this is the company that it does it all.

"We are a global health practice that manages healthcare from query to cure. That's everything from finding information about health and well-being, to connecting with doctors, helping patients with a getting diagnosis, a subscription or test, to engagement tools that they can use on an ongoing basis," Ron Gutman, the Founder and CEO of HealthTap, told me. 

"We help users with understanding their health, giving them information about healthy living, and topics like what to eat, how to sleep, managing pregnancy, even diabetes and cancer management. It's everything about health in one app."

The company also has apps for doctors, while helps them manage their patient's health, and an operating system which connects the patient side to the doctor's, so they can use the data to get them the right care, at the right time, at the right cost. 

The typical user is "a human being, who doesn't have to be a patient," said Gutman. In fact, most people use it for managing their health on an ongoing basis than for connecting with a doctor.

How HealthTap makes money

While the HealthTap app is free, the company makes money through its premium service, called Prime, which it launched In July 2014. 

With the free app, users get a limited access the 5.5 billion answers from doctors available on the platform, while Prime members pay a $99 monthly subscription fee for unlimited access, as well as live consults with physicians via HD video, voice, and text chat. Users can also add additional family members to an Unlimited Plan for just $10 more per month.

Prime members also get access to Doctor A.I., a personal Artificial Intelligence-powered “physician” that helps route users to doctor-recommended insights and care immediately. It was launched last month. 

"It uses artificial intelligence to take symptoms and context and then compute those particular conditions to discover what the patient might have to send them to right level of care. That can be a virtual consultation, or an in-person appointment with doctor. It triages you to right level of care," Gutman explained.

The point is to makes the system a lot smarter by using more data to offer patients personalized offerings.

HealthTap also has several enterprise offerings with which it is serving large scale hospital systems, insurance companies, governments, and self-insured customers. 

The first service is Concierge, which it launched in October 2014. It connects members with their own doctors and healthcare providers via HD video, voice, and text chat for a per-consult fee that starts as low as $49 per consult, or which costs $44 per consult if the user is also subscribed to HealthTap Prime. Consumers don’t need to pay a monthly subscription fee to use HealthTap Concierge, instead doctors pay a license fee to provide their patients with access to HealthTap Concierge.

The second enterprise service is Compass, which was launched in September 2015. It is used by insurance companies and large self-insured employers as a hub for managing all employee healthcare needs, from information to virtual consultation via video/voice/text and from prescriptions and lab test interpretations, to scheduling doctor appointments and referrals to specialists.

HealthTap also works with some of the leading providers via the HealthTap Cloud, launched in November 2016. Health Hospital systems, insurance companies, and even governments are buying licenses to the HealthTap Cloud, which is powered by HealthTap’s proprietary Health Operating System (HOPES), and use their own doctors to provide access to the best health information, virtual consults, and engagement tools to their patients anytime anywhere. HOPES also provides data analytics tools that help these providers serve patients better and faster and to reduce costs.

The license fee HealthTap charges for Compass, Concierge, and the HealthTap Cloud services depends on number of users on the platform.

While Gutman declined to state the number of paying users currently on HealthTap, he did say the number is of total users is in the hundreds of millions, along with 107,000 physicians on the platform. The company says it has saved the lives of at least 24,003 people.

"We have built a great company that is making money and growing fast, but we have made a conscious choice to delay profitability because it is more important for us to invest the money we’re making back into the company in order to continue and fuel even faster growth,” said Gutman.

“Even more importantly, we’re a very mission driven company and our primary purpose is to help people everywhere live healthier, happier, longer lives, and save lives every day. More than 24,000 people have sent notes thanking us for saving their lives. Not many software companies can say that they're writing code in the morning that’s saving lives in the evening," said Gutman.

Gutman added that, "HealthTap wants to provide healthcare for everybody. We believe it is a fundamental human right to have at least minimal access to care. We're building a great company that is growing fast with significant revenues, but we never forget that we are here first and foremost to help people worldwide.”

Thanks to Splash Health 2017 sponsors: Advsr, AARP, Avison Young, Bread and Butter Wine, Surf Air, Stratpoint and Scrubbed.

(Image source: healthtap.com)