This week Steve Case’s Revolution Health Group (RHG) announced six acquisitions which Case said positions the company “on [its] way to put[ting] patients back in control of their health care decisions.”
Case’s launch of RHG’s parent, Revolution LLC, first came to light last spring, in a Business Week article in late March, which was followed by another BW story published a few weeks later. At the time it was reported that Case had invested $500 million in capital to support Revolution investments in the health and wellness and resort industries.
Early Revolution investments include: the acquisition of Wisdom Media, a cable and satellite network that targets the so-called LOHAS (lifestyles of health and sustainability) market, which has since been re-launched as Lime Media, whose tagline is “healthy living with a twist”; Miraval, a luxury resort and spa and; FlexCar, the nation’s first and largest car-sharing service.
According to a company press release, the latest round of acquisitions cover three key areas of the healthcare industry: content, coverage and care.
On the content side, RHG plans to launch a consumer-friendly health portal in 2006, building on four of this week’s acquisitions:
MyDNA Media, which offers health news and information; 1-800-Schedule, which helps consumers find doctors and schedule appointments with health care providers; Simo Software, Inc., which has created software that allows consumers to manage their health care spending, records and finances; and Wondir, Inc., which provides a community-based search for information about health needs and issues.
The company says that “other acquisitions will be added in the months ahead, as well as additional tools and content to be developed by the RHG team.”
In the area of health coverage, “[i]n conjunction with major partners, RHG plans to offer consumers new, easy-to-understand, health care coverage services that aim to give patients and their doctors more control over health care decisions.” Toward that end, RGH has acquired controlling interests in Extend Benefits, LLC and ConnectYourCare, Inc.
RHG has also purchased a minority stake—with an opportunity to acquire a majority stake—in InterFit Health, “one of the nation’s largest providers of retail health screenings and immunizations delivered in retail outlets and at employer worksites.” It is also “providing the capital to support the roll-out of InterFit’s ‘RediClinics,’ which are “retail-based health care centers…staffed by certified nurse practitioners…that provide fast, affordable treatment for routine medical conditions, as well as screenings, medical tests, and immunizations and other preventive services…RediClinic is the second-largest national convenient care chain, with a major, nationwide expansion planned in 2006.”
RHG also announced an executive team, headed up by former IAC/InterActiveCorp. Executive John Pleasants, along with a board of directors that includes Case, Colin Powell, former Fortune 500 CEOs Frank Raines, Jim Barksdale, Steve Wiggins, and Carly Fiorina; and venture capitalists/financiers Miles Gilburne, Jeff Zients, John Delaney, and David Golden.
The Washington Post quotes Case:
“Today’s announcement is just a start, and we have a lot more to do. I view this as a long journey, as AOL was,” said Case in an e-mail. “We do believe new products and services, including telehealth and in-home monitoring and diagnostics, can go a long way towards improving quality and reducing costs.”
The WSJ’s Alan Murray notes the similarities to WebMD, and Case’s view of them:
The [RHG] portal, to be launched sometime next year, sounds a little like WebMD, which has a troubled history but enjoyed a successful IPO last week for its portal, WebMD Health. Mr. Case says WebMD — a former partner of his at AOL — has done a “good job building a brand and an audience,” but is “a mile wide and an inch deep.”
Regardless of what one thinks about Revolution’s strategy and prospects, Steve Case deserves credit for putting $500 million of his own money at risk in an effort to build businesses that can help bring our nation’s healthcare system into the 21st century. According to Murray, “unlike other wealthy entrepreneurs who have turned to government or philanthropy later in life, Mr. Case believes he can do more good as an entrepreneur.” And, as Murray notes:
Certainly, the U.S. health-care system could use a revolution. Runaway costs, uneven quality and tens of millions of uninsured patients have turned it into a national embarrassment — an especially big one that accounts for one-seventh of the U.S. economy.Posted by Mitch Shapiro at 4:36 PM | Print | Comments (0)
At the Personal Democracy Forum, Micah Sifry says he “[n]oticed something interesting about Technorati’s ‘top searches this hour’ list: ever since the New York Times started its ‘TimesSelect’ program and hid all its opinion columnists behind their paywall, the names of their columnists, and sometimes the titles of their columns, have been clogging up the top ten.”
The [New York] Times has made a big mistake in taking their most popular content out of the conversation, and the network is routing around the error. People are turning to bloggers, figuring they’ll find the gist or the text of their favorite columnists in the blogosphere, and their prayers are being answered. Bloggers are posting the full text of Times columns; I wonder what kind of traffic jumps they’re experiencing. And I wonder if the New York Times is now planning to unleash its lawyers on them.Posted by Mitch Shapiro at 4:08 PM | Print | Comments (0)
According to Broadcasting & Cable, a new report from “Friedman Billings Ramsey media analysts Alan Bezoza and Brian Coynes say that cable’s biggest competitive threat for video delivery is not the short-term competition from telcos but the long-term threat of internet-based content delivery.”
[T]he report says the Internet will become the primary deliverer of video content, with companies like Google, Yahoo and AOL becoming the next big aggregators and distributors of content…[It] predicts that unless cable, telco and satellite companies adopt Internet-based video delivery models, “their value in the new value chain will become limited to data transport services.”
…Looking 10 years down the pipe, FBR sees cable becoming “utility companies providing bandwidth to consumers running different applications over their data access”…FBR sees the “pendulum of power” shifting to content providers, though they will first have to figure out how people are paying for that content (subscription or advertising)…FBR also sees growth in the PC and home networking markets that, it believes, will become the TV sets of the future.Posted by Mitch Shapiro at 12:05 PM | Print | Comments (0)
The WSJ reports that ” Time Warner Inc. and Microsoft Corp. have restarted discussions about forming an alliance of their Internet units, America Online and MSN, according to people familiar with the situation.”
The two companies are focused on ways to combine AOL’s Web content with Microsoft’s search-engine technology, although other aspects of the talks are sketchy. It isn’t clear, for instance, whether they are considering merging their Internet dial-up businesses, which generate lots of cash. As of June 30, AOL had 20.7 million dial-up customers while Microsoft had 2.7 million.
Many obstacles remain to a deal, according to people with knowledge of the discussions. Still, the latest talks have restarted in hopes of reaching an agreement by the end of the year. “If you can’t get it done in calendar year 2005, then it’s probably not going to happen,” says one person involved in the negotiations…Time Warner is having conversations with other companies interested in partnering with AOL, according to a person close to the situation.
In a blog post and research report that analyzes some key financials, former high-flying Wall Street analyst Henry Blodget argues that “[i]n the absence of disastrous mistakes by Google and Yahoo!, Microsoft’s best chance to win with MSN is to merge it with AOL and spin it off.”
Posted by Mitch Shapiro at 11:50 AM | Print | Comments (0)
In an effort to stop peer-to-peer sharing, HBO is “poisoning” BitTorrent downloads of its new show Rome, according to O’Reilly Radar. In addition to the standard practice of offering bogus downloads, HBO is using a tracker that tries to fool people into thinking they’ve downloaded all the necessary chunks, when in fact they haven’t. The downloading client detects the bogus chunks and keeps looking, but the process takes a lot longer than usual.
As Nat at O’Reilly Radar points out, there are systems that detect bogus peers (he even lists a bunch of the bogus peers to help readers avoid the “poisoning” because “If you send me a bogus fragment, you’re obviously evil”) making HBO’s tactic, well, ineffective. Techdirt has a similar take on this effort:
The strategy appears to be ineffective as well as stupid, as most newer BitTorrent clients have features to defeat this type of attack. The demand for downloads of the show indicates there’s a demand for it that’s not being met by HBO’s traditional distribution, but like other companies before, HBO doesn’t appear to realize it. Other TV networks are beginning to experiment with making shows available online, illustrating that the right reponse is figuring out a way to monetize downloading, not trying to stop it.Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 9:09 AM | Print | Comments (0)
Courtesy of Rebuilding Media, Mark Glaser has an excellent report in this month’s Online Journalism Review about Yahoo’s efforts to beef up its original reporting and the resulting fearful reaction of mainstream media. Part of the traditional media’s concern stems from Yahoo’s power as a news aggregator, with outlets such as the Los Angeles Times fearful of Yahoo shoving aside unaffiliated content providers in favor of their own reporters.
Scott Moore, head of Yahoo’s content operations, told Glaser that none of the 70 content providers with which Yahoo works has nothing to fear. Neil Budde, General Manager of Yahoo News, elaborated:
“What we’re doing with Kevin Sites [Yahoo’s first traveling war correspondent] is to venture into an area that allows us to understand better the future of online journalism, building something from the ground up and have someone cover something in a multimedia way,” Budde said. “But we’re trying to stake out areas that are not getting a lot of coverage. We’re not going to go out and replicate what is already available from other media sources and news organizations. We’re looking at areas where we can cover stories in different areas or areas that aren’t getting any coverage.”
Glaser also points out that despite the grumblings of mainstream media outlets, they’re in no rush to innovate at the level of Yahoo.
According to PressThink’s Jay Rosen:
“Big Media does not know how to innovate,” Rosen wrote on PressThink. “What capacity for product development do news organizations show? Zip. How are they on nurturing innovation? Terrible. Is there an entrepreneurial spirit in newsrooms? No. Do smart young people ever come in and overturn everything? Never. Do these firms attract designers and geeks who are gifted with technology? They don’t, because they don’t do anything challenging enough. They don’t innovate, or pay well. So they can’t compete.”Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 8:32 AM | Print | Comments (0)
Internet powerhouse and maverick Google is joining the mainstream of the business world — it’s opening an office in DC to represent its interests in policy and legislative realms. Google has hired Alan Davidson, formerly an associate director at the non-profit Center for Democracy and Technology, to protect its interests on such hot-button issues as net-neutrality, privacy and VoIP regulations.
Google lays out its policy goals at its official blog, interesting reading for cable operators and phone companies. Here’s a snippet on Google’s view of net neutrality:
Should an innovator with a new online service or application be forced to get permission from each broadband cable and DSL provider before rolling it out? Or, if that’s not blunt enough for you, what’s better: [a] Centralized control by network operators, or [b] free user choice on the decentralized, open, and astoundingly successful end-to-end Internet? (Hint: It’s not [a].)Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 7:34 AM | Print | Comments (0)
Dan Farber at ZDNet’s Between the Lines reports that AOL’s CEO Jonathan Miller announced at the Web 2.0 conference that AOL is changing the name of the company to…AOL. Actually, in a sensible move America Online is dropping the “America” part of its name to gain greater acceptance internationally. It will now be known simply as AOL, not America Online.
Miller also noted that both AOL and rival Yahoo share a common vision of pumping up video distribution capabilities.
“It’s a real turning point for video consumption over IP, and we want to do a lot more of it,” Miller said. “Today we have a lot more video than anybody else [a Time Warner company], more video assets and programs, and we’ll take Weblogs (AOL acquired blog network Weblogs, Inc. today) into print and video as well.”Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 7:20 AM | Print | Comments (0)
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