Wildflower Health Acquires Circle, an Innovative Mobile Health Business Incubated by Providence St. Joseph Health
Combined Technologies, Expertise Creates Groundbreaking Platform for Family Health Engagement
Wildflower Health, a leading mobile health software company, today announced it has acquired the Circle Women’s Health Platform, a mobile health technology incubated by Providence St. Joseph Health (PSJH), the nation’s third-largest nonprofit health system. As part of the transaction, PSJH has signed an enterprise-wide commercial agreement with Wildflower. Providence Ventures will also participate in Wildflower’s recently announced Series C financing led by Health Enterprise Partners, with participation by existing investors Hatteras Venture Partners and Echo Health Ventures.
“We are committed to growing healthy families and creating long-term value for our payor, provider and employer clients,” said Leah Sparks, founder and CEO of Wildflower. “The addition of Circle’s innovative technology platform and its talented team greatly enhances our ability to simplify healthcare, every day, by making intelligent connections between consumers and the resources they need, when they need them.”
Wildflower’s mobile-based enterprise software serves as a digital catalyst for clients’ existing clinical services, improving outcomes and operational efficiency, while increasing engagement, satisfaction and loyalty with women and their families. With Wildflower, families can manage the health needs of moms, dads, kids and aging parents on one shared application. Users gain access to decision-support tools, education modules, milestone-driven care plans and reminders for immunizations, doctor visits and preventive health.
Circle was created by PSJH clinicians who wanted to ensure their patients regularly receive curated, provider-approved family and children's health resources. The app serves as a single source of information for parents, providing resources on everything from breastfeeding to teenager interactions. Circle provides content, tools and trackers, and is integrated into the health system’s EMR.
Wildflower’s client contracts represent more than 45 million health-plan lives under management, as well as a growing number of hospitals. Circle is currently available in nearly 30 hospitals across the PSJH network, as well as within parts of other highly respected health systems such as OSF Healthcare and Sutter Health. Wildflower currently works with Dignity Health, the nation’s fifth-largest health system, which was the company’s first enterprise-wide health system client and an early investor.
“We are quickly creating an ecosystem that allows for individual users to access benefits and resources from their health plan, provider, employer and local community all within one app,” said Sparks. “Think about how different that is from the status quo in healthcare and the typical experience for individuals as they try to navigate a complex, confusing and fragmented system.”
For Wildflower, the acquisition further strengthens its national footprint while accelerating the organization’s product development efforts and solidifying its position as a major change agent within the mobile health movement. For PSJH, the transaction is the result of two years of innovative collaboration between its Digital team and Women and Children’s Clinical Program Services teams.
Bringing Circle to market as part of the transaction with Wildflower is part of PSJH’s strategy to develop novel solutions to healthcare-provider needs, scale them at PSJH, commercialize these innovations, and create value for PSJH beyond the immediate health system. Circle is the second incubated solution to be spun out by the PSJH Digital Innovation team following Xealth’s spinout and funding by DFJ in June of 2017.
“Circle has been key in helping PSJH clinicians provide our patients with a trusted clinical voice from pregnancy through delivery and into pediatrics, and soon on to women’s health. The collaboration on Circle between our clinical and digital teams has resulted in a solution that makes our patients’ lives easier and our clinicians’ work more efficient and rewarding,” said Amy Compton-Phillips, M.D., EVP, Chief Clinical Officer, PSJH. “We’re looking forward to continuing the close collaboration we’ve had in creating Circle with the Wildflower Health team.”
Aaron Martin, EVP, Chief Digital/Innovation Officer at PSJH and Managing General Partner, Providence Ventures, will join Wildflower’s Board of Directors.
“We are continually seeking new ways to engage more consumers in their health between episodes of care, with the goal of ultimately making our communities healthier through continuous digital engagement,” said Martin. “The combination of Wildflower Health and Circle will result in a comprehensive, personalized solution for family health and will allow PSJH to accelerate our vision of digitally engaging every family we serve.”
To learn more about Wildflower’s mobile-based enterprise software, please visit wildflowerhealth.com. For more information on the Circle platform, go to circle-platform.com.
About Providence St. Joseph Health
Providence St. Joseph Health is committed to improving the health of the communities it serves, especially those who are poor and vulnerable. With 51 hospitals, 829 physician clinics, senior services, supportive housing and many other health and educational services, the health system and its partners employ 119,000 caregivers (employees) serving communities across seven states—Alaska, California, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Texas and Washington.
About Wildflower Health
Wildflower grows healthy families by making intelligent connections between consumers and their healthcare. We simplify healthcare every day, helping families manage the health needs of moms, dads, kids and aging parents on one shared mobile application. Our mobile-based enterprise software serves as a digital catalyst for our clients, improving clinical outcomes and operational efficiency, while increasing engagement, satisfaction and loyalty. Visit us at wildflowerhealth.com.