SoloHealth and WellPoint Announce Strategic Relationship to Help Make Consumers More Aware, Empowered & Healthy

ATLANTA, Aug. 3, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- SoloHealth®, a leading consumer-driven health care technology company, announced today a new relationship with WellPoint, Inc. (NYSE: WLP), one of the nation's largest health benefits companies, to help provide consumers with convenient access to information about their health and wellness through the next-generation SoloHealth Station™ consumer kiosk.  

Today's news comes on the heels of SoloHealth's recent FDA approval in June, as well as its announcement of an aggressive rollout to retail locations nationwide to begin this fall.

The SoloHealth Station is an interactive, comprehensive health and wellness screening kiosk for consumers placed in high-traffic retail locations or strategic, high-volume places like corporate campuses or hospitals.  The SoloHealth Station provides health screenings for vision, blood pressure, weight, and body mass index, a symptom checker as well as an overall health assessment free of charge.  SoloHealth also helps connect consumers to local professionals through their databases, helping people enter the most appropriate and accurate point in the health care system.  

"We have a longstanding commitment to help people get healthy and stay healthy by leveraging consumer-friendly products and services to improve their health and wellness," said Brett Moraski, vice president of transformation for WellPoint. "SoloHealth's consumer kiosk, the SoloHealth Station, is a truly innovative product that leverages technology to provide an enhanced, convenient and engaging consumer health experience.  By investing in SoloHealth we are excited to help millions of Americans better manage their own health and wellbeing."

The SoloHealth Station offers highly personalized, targeted and interactive opportunities for consumers, advertisers and retailers by placing kiosks in high-traffic retail locations and offering integration across a multi-platform ecosystem complete with digital signage, Internet, mobile and social media. The multiple-platform approach gives brand partners, consumers and medical professionals the ease of interaction from many touch points allowing for greater effectiveness and efficiencies.

"WellPoint is an established, trusted health benefits company and we are proud to benefit both from a financial investment as well as explore future opportunities to help improve access to convenient and affordable health care services," said Bart Foster, CEO & Founder of SoloHealth. "We will utilize the additional funding to invest back into our technology and platform, as well as help scale as we continue our nationwide rollout."

The relationship includes a financial investment but terms were not disclosed. Additionally, Brett Moraski has been named to the SoloHealth board of directors.     

ABOUT SOLOHEALTH:  Based in Atlanta, Ga., SoloHealth® is a leader in self-service consumer healthcare, utilizing patented technology to deploy interactive health screening kiosks to empower consumers about their health through awareness, education and convenience.  The company's award-winning first offering was the EyeSite Vision kiosk.  In summer 2010, the company received a $1.2 M grant from the National Institute of Health (NIH), a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 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. The company's bilingual kiosks provide free health screenings and recommendations for follow-up care, which leads to prevention and lower health care costs.  In March 2011, Coinstar, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSTR), owner of Redbox, made a financial investment in SoloHealth.  For more information, visit www.solohealth.com.

About WellPoint, Inc.: At WellPoint, we believe there is an important connection between our members' health and well-being—and the value we bring our customers and shareholders. So each day we work to improve the health of our members and their communities. And, we can make a real difference since we have approximately 34 million people in our branded health plans, and approximately 65 million people served through our subsidiaries. As an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, WellPoint serves members as the Blue Cross licensee for California; the Blue Cross and Blue Shield licensee for Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Missouri (excluding 30 counties in the Kansas City area), Nevada, New Hampshire, New York (as the Blue Cross Blue Shield licensee in 10 New York City metropolitan and surrounding counties and as the Blue Cross or Blue Cross Blue Shield licensee in selected upstate counties only), Ohio, Virginia (excluding the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C.), and Wisconsin. In a majority of these service areas, WellPoint's plans do business as Anthem Blue Cross, Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Georgia and Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield, or Empire Blue Cross (in the New York service areas). WellPoint also serves customers across the country through our UniCare subsidiary and in certain California, Arizona and Nevada markets through our CareMore subsidiary. Our 1-800 CONTACTS, Inc. subsidiary offers customers online sales of contact lenses, eyeglasses and other ocular products. Additional information about WellPoint is available at www.wellpoint.com.

SOURCE SoloHealth