Aflac Corporate Ventures, the investment arm of Aflac Incorporated, has announced a strategic investment in digital health company Sharecare. The Atlanta-based company’s total funding now exceeds $425 million following this investment.
“To date, we have invested nearly half a billion dollars in our platform, and we will never stop innovating,“ Jen Martin Hall, senior vice president of corporate communications at Sharecare, tells Hypepotamus. “With each strategic partner we add to our investor roster, we continue to scale our company and platform for the future.”
The digital platform allows users to get answers to all of their health questions in one place. Users can use Sharecare’s mobile app to ask health questions; the app then connects them not only to doctors, health information and services online, and but to community resources they can access closer to home as well.
Sharecare also helps health providers, health plans, and employers effectively scale health and wellness solutions for the people they serve. This investment serves as the culmination of the digital health company’s months-long effort to find strategic partners that can help them ramp up its fight to improve health outcomes in Georgia.
“From their expertise in healthcare to the Georgians they protect as well as those they employ, Aflac Corporate Ventures taking a seat at that table stands to have a transformative impact on our state and the health industry at-large,” Martin Hall says.
Aflac’s investment comes three months after Sharecare announced a partnership with Quest Diagnostics, now a preferred partner on the digital health platform. The two partners also announced plans to collaborate on the development of disease management programs and other services designed to improve health outcomes.
Aflac Corporate Ventures president Nadeem G. Khan highlighted these news as a sign of its focus on innovative growth-stage companies like Sharecare.
“Working with Sharecare affords us the additional opportunity to invest proudly in a Georgia-based business and play an even bigger role in helping improve the overall health and well-being of everyone,” Khan said in a statement.
Sharecare has already had a tangible effect on healthcare in its home state. Two years ago, Sharecare partnered with the Atlanta Hawks to launch the Sharecare Movement, a multi-year program designed to significantly improve health outcomes in both Atlanta and the state of Georgia.
Sharecare made its health platform available for free via mobile to Georgia residents. The Sharecare Movement has already played a role in improving Georgia’s year-over-year ranking some eight places on the national well-being index.
In a statement, Sharecare CEO Jeff Arnold touted the two companies’ shared mission to improve health via digital innovation.
“What truly galvanizes this opportunity with Aflac is the passion we share to improve well-being for everyone, starting with Georgia,” he said. “Having companies like Aflac support our mission stands to have a transformative impact on our business, our state and the health industry at-large.”
These investments cap off a banner year for Sharecare. In January, the company announced a partnership with the Georgia Department of Community Health to launch a new incentive program to reward State Health Benefit Plan members who make healthy choices.
“While we’re proud of the work we have done at Sharecare — we’re just getting started,” said Arnold.