Aetna has acquired Humana for $36 billion in cash and stock, as you may’ve read on your favorite news site. We won’t go into details what that means for the insurance industry, but we’ll look into the deal’s impact on the digital health market.

For starters, we need to acknowledge that both companies run various mobile programs for their members and the general public.

Aetna’s flagship digital health offering is the iTriage app, which the company acquired in 2011, and which allows users to find a nearby hospital or a doctor’s office, while also offering price transparency, health education and literacy, and prescription management tools. Moreover, iTriage may also get virtual doctor visits in the near future.

It’s not clear what will Aetna do with Humana’s mobile app/service portfolio.The Aetna Mobile app has many of iTriage’s features, and allows members to access information about their insurance, while the Resources for Living app helps users manage stress and anxiety, moderate work-life balance, and track their moods.

As for Humana, its employee wellness offering HumanaVitality has a dedicated app that enables users to track health and fitness metrics, take health assessments, challenge coworkers, and find out how to stay healthy. The application even offers incentives for healthy behavior, by allowing folks to earn virtual currency “Vitality Bucks” that can be exchanged for things like gift cards.

Humana also has an app for its members called MyHumana, an app for care managers called CareMatch, and RightSource – a prescription management app. Additionally, there’s the Cue app which was designed just for the Apple Watch to nudge wearers to stand up, drink water, or straighten their postures so they could stay healthy.

What is unclear at this stage is what will Aetna do with Humana’s mobile app/service portfolio, and that has a lot to do with other question – are they going to keep the Humana brand? If that’s the case they may decided to keep each brand’s “app policy” with Humana pushing forward its prevention agenda, which Aetna doesn’t seem to like. Or we’ll see a single insurer with more apps, targeting multiple users groups?

We’ll have to wait a bit to see what comes out of this deal. And in the meantime, digital health startups just got one payer less to deal with. Is that a good or bad thing? What do you think?

[Via mobihealthnews, Image from CNBC]