American Well’s Exchange is looking to connect telehealth supply and demand

American Well

American Well unveiled its newest enterprise telehealth service, the Exchange, that allows healthcare organizations to redistribute their services online to new patient populations. The company also announced the first partners to use the Exchange – Cleveland Clinic, Nemours Children’s Health System and LiveHealth Online.

“The Exchange breaks down silos of healthcare delivery and connects every stakeholder in the industry – those who seek care, deliver care, and pay for it – to make great, trusted healthcare more accessible,” Dr. Roy Schoenberg, CEO and co-founder of American Well, said in a statement. “We want to do for healthcare what Amazon did for book stores initially, and online retail, ultimately, which is to establish a national platform on which online healthcare runs.”

Cleveland Clinic, Nemours Children’s Health System and LiveHealth Online are the first organizations to enter the Exchange.With the Exchange, the virtual barriers between the supply (i.e. hospitals and health systems) and demand generators (i.e. insurers and employers), and their distinct telehealth services are lifted. Now, these organizations can connect and exchange their services with one another, instantly, online. As such, a new opportunity emerges for healthcare providers looking to “package” up care and population programs into telehealth “products,” and distribute them to payers and employers through the Exchange. These programs could target specific groups, such as people with hypertension, diabetes, cancer, Parkinson’s and so on.

Cleveland Clinic and LiveHealth Online are among the first partners to use the Exchange in a deal that will see Cleveland Clinic offering its services on the LiveHealth Online platform, a telehealth service for live, video consults with a provider to obtain diagnosis and receive treatment for common urgent care conditions. Consumers who access LiveHealth Online in Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania can connect with Cleveland Clinic Nurse Practitioners for live video consults on-demand.

There’s also Nemours Children’s Health System which will be offering pediatric video consults in Delaware, Florida and Pennsylvania. Through the Exchange, consumers in Florida who use American Well’s consumer telehealth platform, Amwell, will have access to Nemours’ board-certified pediatricians 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Later this year, Nemours will expand this service to Delaware and Pennsylvania.

Earlier this year, American Well introduced the first Mobile Telehealth Software Development Kit (SDK) which lets organizations plug telehealth capabilities directly into their own consumer-facing mobile apps. With the Exchange, these consumer-facing apps can now tap directly into services from American Well’s partners.