Health Dialog: Empowering the Patient

Description: Health Dialog Services Corporation is a leading provider of healthcare management, analytics and decision support to over 20 million people worldwide. Spencer Trask's network of private investors supported Health Dialog's mission of reducing medical costs while improving quality of care and patient satisfaction, and the company became one the fastest-growing private companies in the U.S., according to Inc. Magazine.

Products: Health Dialog services are rooted in data analytics to help clients identify the unique drivers of variation within their own populations and develop strategies to improve healthcare cost and quality. These strategies typically combine several service offerings, health coaching and healthcare decision support for individuals; evidence-based videos, booklets, and interactive web resources; information and analysis for providers; analysis and reporting for payers.

Consumer engagement techniques underpin Health Dialog programs, so that the individuals most in need are attracted to participate, and coaching is based on behavioral models that put the individual at the center of his or her own learning and growth as a health consumer.

Health Dialog also generates commercially relevant insights into healthcare cost and quality. In all, it's conducted over 200 randomized controlled trials covering everything from which coaching techniques work best to how to engage people with low literacy levels.

Accomplishments: Health Dialog commercialized the research of Drs. John and David Wennberg and their colleagues at the Dartmouth Institute. The firm was built in collaboration with the not-for-profit Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making (FIMDM) to address unwarranted variation in healthcare. Unwarranted variation is the subject of more than 30 years of the Wennberg's objective, peer-reviewed research. The $40 million in research funded by Health Dialog was the spark that ignited the recent Health Care revolution, and it gave Congress and the Obama Administration the blueprint for practical reform.

Financing: Spencer Trask Ventures financed the launch of the company with $10 million in 2001. Two years after a cash distribution of $170 million, Health Dialog was acquired by (BUPA) for $775 million.

Recent News: Health Dialog Receives Leadership Award for Outstanding Journal Article at the 2011 Care Continuum Alliance Forum (Sept. 8, 2011)

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