Affordable health care at retail
With 3,500 locations currently installed at retail and another 1,000 on the way in 2014, SoloHealth Stations are giving new meaning to affordable health care.
The company, which describes itself as a consumer-drive healthcare company, recently surpassed 40 million user engagements, a metric the company uses to describe people who interact with its self-service health care kiosks to monitor a variety of health care conditions. The company’s innovative health care kiosk hit the market in 2011 and currently they are located in more than 3,500 retail stores including select Walmart, Safeway, Sam’s Club, Schnuck’s Markets, Vons, Tom Thumb and Randalls stores. That figure is expected to grow by 1,000 units in 2014, according to the company.
“We are thrilled to offer millions of Americans a healthcare access platform that delivers free health and wellness services, tools and information in convenient retail locations nationwide,” said Bart Foster, CEO and founder of SoloHealth. “We are now within driving distance of 79% of the U.S. population, which shows the scale and reach of the Station across the nation. As we grow, we are exploring new ways our versatile platform can help connect users to the data, services and information vital to impact their health and produce better healthcare outcomes.”
The SoloHealth Station is an FDA-cleared, HIPAA-compliant and patented technology that provides consumers with a digital, self-service healthcare platform that includes free health and wellness services, biometric screenings, health risk assessments and information. The Station also connects consumers to local professionals through their databases, helping people enter the most appropriate and accurate point in the healthcare system.
The program got its start in the summer of 2010 when SoloHealth received a $1.2 million grant from the National Institute of Health to help enable innovation for self-service healthcare and prevention. In 2011, SoloHealth announced its next-generation kiosk, the SoloHealth Station, offering vision, blood pressure, weight, symptoms checking, body mass index, overall health assessment; and access to a database of local doctors.
Investors and partners include Outerwall, the company behind Coinstar and Redbox, HBOC founder Walter Huff, WellPoint and Dell.