We were the first to apply behavioral economics to healthcare
To enable everyone to enjoy healthy lives through research, personalized engagement and learning from the experience of every patient.
We exist to enable clinicians and researchers to serve patients by making their ideas come to life.
Innovate. Enable. Scale.
Technology assisted motivation & human behavior change is the key to advancing health outcomes. The healthcare system needs a purpose built tool that allows for scale and to engage with people in their existing journeys. Way to Health has demonstrated its value as a research platform in this domain. The platform, its developers, and its uses have credibility among the research community.
Even as more research and successes are published, its application in the real world still lags as systems and plans don’t quite know how to apply it in their context. THe goal is to reduce the time it takes for interventional research to be applied in specific patient contexts as short as possible. We want to take a leadership position in tactical research and deployment of evidence based research.
Good technology must join not just patient and physician journeys, but also their existing technology, such as legacy EHR systems i.e. be available in the context of their life and their “workflow”. Tighter integration with EHRs is necessary. Health systems have spent millions deploying and customizing EHRs. They are looking for ways to maximize the ROI. This will be a platform available to all irrespective of the EHR of choice.
Program requirements change as they grow and evolve. We will provide software and services to help organizations (internal as well as external) build, test, iterate and integrate to service their patient and provider needs. We will do so as efficiently and effectively as possible, while remaining a non-profit organization.
Drs. David Asch and Kevin Volpp conceptualized Way to Health back in 2010. It was born from their frustration around the lack of a platform to quickly develop, test and scale out their ideas to improve health care for patients.
Since then, more than 50 faculty and researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and other renowned institutions have conducted and continue to research direct patient engagement and behavioral economics based interventions aimed at reducing the disease burden from major U.S. public health problems.
We work very closely with multiple renowned groups at Penn
Our evolution
May 2021
We hit our 5 year goal of touching 1 million patients / participants in 2 years.
February 2021
We expect to hit our 5 year goal of touching 1 million patients / participants this year. We are proud to be part of some ground breaking studies (BCFG Flu vaccination) and also enabling COVID vaccination related efforts including local community clinics and larger outreach to vulnerable patient populations.
December 2020
Mega programs are increasingly deployed on Way to Health targeting entire populations of patients with specific conditions, states and much more. Key programs continue to have 75+ NPS ratings.
July 2020
Way to Health is increasingly used in clinical programs and is central to Penn's COVID-19 response efforts. Programs such as COVID Watch, COVID Pulse, Results Reporting and many more get rolled out in record time.
December 2019
Improvements in the platform now allow accelerated deployments at an average rate of 2-3 programs per week.
July 2019
Our user base continues to diversity with multiple external organizations across the country starting up projects independently from Penn.
June 2018
Way To Health continues to go from strength to strength. It currently has managed a total of a 101 programs with many more in the pipeline.
December 2017
Successes continue to add up as the platform is used now not only for research but also for clinical pilots and larger scale clinical deployments.
July 2016
Successes continue to pile up and the platform continues to evolve as more and more capabilities are needed - gamification, device integrations, text messaging and many more.
July 2015
Way To Health continues to gain wider adoption with zero marketing. This is major milestone as it represents programs across multiple domains - CHF, Diabetes, Wellness, Adolescents and Children and many more
Jan 2014
Behavioral economics based research continues to show promise and this purpose built tool increasingly becomes the go-to choice for researchers. Kevin and David institute grants to give young researchers a way to quickly try out innovative ideas.
July 2013
In the "invest when necessary" mould, Way to Health begins to grow its internal engineering, product and implementation teams.
Jan 2012
Way To Health continues to evolve as more and more researchers within Penn use the platform to set up and deploy small and large scale programs.
Jan 2011
Seminal study was focused on smoking cessation and using financial incentives to quit smoking. National study conducted among CVS employees using financial incentives to quit smoking. Largest study conducted to date of financial incentives and smoking cessation in an employer setting, led to benefit design changes across CVS.
July 2010
David Asch and Kevin Volpp come up with the idea of building a software platform to simplify and automate all the steps needed to set up and manage interventional clinical trials with a specific focus on behavioral economics. NIH provides seed funding to make this idea a reality.