Personalized health network HealthTap buys Avvo Health

The acquisition expands HealthTap's network of health professionals to more than 30K

Looks like HealthTap is seeing some strong growth.  The personalized health platform announced Thursday that it has acquired Avvo Health, the health division of expert-only Q&A site Avvo.  The financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed, but the company says that it was an all-cash deal.

The acquisition expands HealthTap’s network to over 30,000 doctors and dentists across 128 specialties in all 50 states.

As Avvo’s primary business has been as a Q&A network of legal experts, it will continue to operate on its own as a resource for people looking for lawyers, attorney ratings, and free legal advice.  As HealthTap is taking over its medical division, Avvo will now focus exclusively on its legal business.

The deal also adds group practices and hospitals to HealthTap’s network.  This is HealthTap’s first acquisition, and while the company isn’t releasing the number of patient users in its network, CEO Ron Gutman tells me that the acquisition has added many more users.

“Pregnant women and moms (Pediatrics and OBGyn) are still two large and highly active groups of HealthTap, but we also have large groups in Diabetes, Heart Health, Cancer, Flu, Stroke, Cholesterol, Headache, Arthritis, ADHD, Asthma, Allergies, Healthy Living and more,” said Gutman.

To recap, HealthTap is designed to displace Dr. Google by letting users create their own patient profiles and get their questions answered by real doctors in the HealthTap network.  Over 80% of Web users admit to having looked for health information online. 

Over the summer, HealthTap unveiled some new features, including doctor ratings—called the “DocScore”—which acts as something of a FICO score based on public data and doctor-to-doctor peer review.  Doctors can even rank one another on their expertise levels.

You can also now check out a directory of some 1.2 million doctors and schedule in-person appointments using appointment requests, direct messaging, and phone calls.

“I was surprised to discover that it takes more than 20 days on average in this country to schedule an appointment with a doctor!” said Gutman.  “I was also surprised that until today there hasn't been one good/deep/trustworthy directory of doctors available for users on mobile devices.”

To date, there have been 30 million network and referral connections on the HealthTap platform, which also includes some three million organizational affiliations and patients with over 450 different insurance companies.

HealthTap also now offers premium services that users can purchase with a new micropayment system.  Premium services include private health conversations—so you can pose a question to a specific doctor with the peace of mind of knowing it’s secure.  You can also connect with a doctor of your choice for immediate answers to your health questions via a list of who’s “online now.”  You can also share health records, photos, and documents securely with specific doctors in the HealthTap network.