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WiserTogether: Helping Consumers Chart a Best Course of Action
CEO of WiserTogether, Shub Degupta, talks to mHealth News about the company’s partnership with national telehealth provider MDLIVE, a contract with international research and education firm John Wiley & Sons, and an investment by 7Wire Ventures. 7Wire’s Managing Partner, Glen Tullman, also comments on how WiserTogether can prompt consumers to make better healthcare decisions:
A company that uses data from both doctors and patients to chart a consumer’s regimen is gaining support from a wide variety of partners. And it could make crowdsourcing the hot new topic in mHealth.
WiserTogether was launched five years ago and began marketing its Wiser Health Platform about three years ago, according to company CEO Shub Debgupta. This week the company announced a partnership with national telehealth provider MDLIVE to equip members with immediate access to healthcare providers, a contract with the international research and education firm John Wiley & Sons, and an investment from 7Wire Ventures, the firm launched last year by former Allscripts executives Glen Tullman and Lee Shapiro.
WiserTogether’s selling point is its Wiser Health Platform, which gathers data from consumers and doctors who have encountered similar medical issues and creates a list of best options based on clinical efficacy, financial considerations and treatment preferences.
“It’s like eHarmony for healthcare,” said Debgupta. “What’s missing in the healthcare market right now is patient preferences, and yet those preferences can lead to better outcomes, better choices and more conviction in those choices.”
Tullman, whose firm has invested in several innovative healthcare, education and energy startups recently, said WiserTogether could make a difference in prompting consumers to make better healthcare decisions. He sees this as the next step in crafting the “intelligent connected health consumer” of the future.
“When people talk about big data or crowdsourcing, they are talking about using all the relevant data and making it both useful – that is, turning it into information – and accessible, which usually means on a mobile phone,” he said. “We’re focusing on the unique opportunity to crowd-source health information – including from physicians – in real time … whenever and wherever you need it.”
Read the full story at mhealthnews.com