By Kevin Truong, MedCity News | September 19, 2018
The new service adds health coaching and virtual care on top of the company’s existing enterprise wellness offerings.
In an effort to shore up its business with enterprise customers, San Francisco-based Fitbit has launched Fitbit Care, a new service that wraps in health coaching and virtual care, along with the company’s existing activity tracking services.
Fitbit Care offers the ability to work with human health coaches to help users meet fitness and health goals through personalized care plans and in-app, over the phone and in-person meetings. Use cases listed by the company include weight management, smoking cessation, and management of chronic or complex conditions like diabetes, depression or COPD.
According to the company, Fitbit has more than 1,600 enterprise health customers and works with more than 100 health plans on wellness and health management programs.
Last year, Apple surpassed Fitbit in global market share in the wearables market, a lead it has kept into 2018. In response, Fitbit has looked to diversify its income streams in health and wellness past device sales and into recurring revenue through development and investment in health software applications.
With the increased competition in the wearables space, Fitbit has turned to health coaching and chronic disease management as a promising business line, highlighted by the company’s acquisition of health coaching startup Twine Health earlier this year.
Twine Health developed a platform that helped manage chronic conditions like diabetes and hypertension through personalized recommendations about lifestyle changes.
“With Fitbit Care we are delivering a solution that empowers people to take control of their health, by providing the accountability, support, guidance and resources that remove some of the most difficult barriers to behavior change,” John Moore, medical director of Fitbit Health Solutions said in a statement.
The wearables company is also expanding their partnership with health insurer Humana by giving plan members access to Fitbit Care’s additional wellness and health coaching applications.
Fitbit initially signed Humana on as a customer back in 2013 and supports the insurer’s wellness programs like Go365 and Humana Employee Assistance Program, which helps employers control rising costs due to chronic disease.
“By adding Fitbit Care’s new health coaching capabilities, we can offer even more personalized, meaningful support to our members who are focused on specific health goals, such as smoking cessation or weight loss, or the management or
prevention of chronic conditions,” Jeff Reid, Humana’s senior vice president of Wellness Solutions, said in a statement.
“Fitbit’s intuitive technology and human coaches are powerful tools to engage and motivate members, creating more frequent, convenient touch-points that support our members beyond the walls of a doctor’s office.”