Summary of

American well: The Doctor will E-see You Now

Founder of Amerian Well → Ido Schoenberg and his brother Roy Schoenberg
founded this online care in 2006.
Background of the Co-founders:
❖ Ido Schoenberg: He was trained as a physician at the University of Tel Aviv Sackler of
Medicine in Israel. Also in 1996, he and his wife Phylis Gotlib cofounded iMDsoft, a
health-care enterprise software company. In 2000, Ido left the company but
continued to serve as chairman of its scientific advisory board. In 2001, Ido became
the CEO of Carekey, a provider of electronic health management systems.
❖ Roy Schoenberg: He was a graduate of Hebrew University Medical School. Roy
worked as an internal medicine physician in Israel before pursuing a research
fellowship at the Center for clinical Computing and a mater’s of public health degree
from Harvard University. As a fellow, Roy published a scientific paper in the British
Medical Journal.
Moto of American Well: To change health-care delivery and improve the way
patients interact with physicians.
Why American well was founded?
Generally, patients had two choices while meeting doctors –
a) To show up at an emergency room
b) To take appointment which could result in weeks of waiting for an office visit
So Ido and Roy founded this online care company with a vision to use the internet and
telephony to connect patients and doctors within minutes in real time.

Key players in health-care delivery in the U.S. →

• Patients
• Public and private payors
• Suppliers of medicals devices and drugs
• Health-care IT providers
• Private equity and venture capital firms
System description of American Well: Online Care:
There were a number of developments in the use of
telecommunications and computer-based tools to collect, manage and communicate
health-care-related information and transactions. The system provided computerized
decision-support and order entry systems for doctors, electronic health or medical
records and tools for searching health information, bill-pay services, appointment
 scheduling and communication of lab result. How the interaction between the physician
and patients happened, can be understood through a flowchart as follows,

Physicians who were A patient would log on The patient would

enrolled in the system to the system.
would able to log in any
time they wanted.
Then doctor would Then the patient
access the medical instantly got a choice of
record of the patient current doctors online
and the conversation that matched the
started through video request.
or live chat options.
provide his/her credit
card information.
Physician who were
enrolled in the system
would able to log in any
Then
time theyhe/she
wanted. can
indicate what type of
doctor he/she would
like to consult with.

After ending the

interaction, the system
would manage the
billing process.

Advantages for PATIENTS to use the this Online Care:

• Immediacy
• Convenience
• Quality
• Affordability
• Choice
• No need to schedule an appointment
• Getting new form of privacy
• Could seek a second opinion immediately after receiving diagnosis.

Advantages for DOCTORS to use the this Online Care:

• Doctors that have had a clinic for many years and bored with the routine would be
able to work in their clinic less days and make up the revenue from home.
• Other doctors, who don’t have a clinic, would be able to earn on weekends.
• Young doctors will be able to add a second shift in the evening time, if they have to
leave their office early.
• Moreover, retired doctors would be able to come back in practice.
American Well → B2B or DTC:
The company ultimately decided to go with B2B model where it targeted
health insurance companies as primary customer. Perceptions to go with insurance
companies:
a) Insurance companies offer easier access to large pools of patients and physicians.
They also facilitate access to patients’ medical records and also sponsor online
medical consultations.
b) Because of financial strength, they represented a more lucrative customer than
individual patients.
c) Value propositicon for health insurance companies had a clear economic
component, as online visits would cost less than in-person office visits.
d) Also health insurance companies could open their doors to non-members to
generate revenue from a market they have never pursued before.
e) According to Ido, health insurance companies would see a reputational benefit by
offering Online Care. These companies were out of touch with average Americans
and primarily driven by profit. So, by offering online care to non-members, they can
improve their image.
Financing of American Well:
According to Ido, Financing is not an event, rather it is a mark of a
relationship. So the company targeted high-net-worth investors, who are like-minded.
They raised the capital twice – first round took 10 days and the second round took a
week.

Launching of the Online Care:

The company was launched at Hawaii in January, 2009 and HMSA (Hawii
Medical Service Association) became the first health insurance company to offer Online
Care using American Well platform. There were two reasons for this decision as follows,
a) Due to geography of the state, HMSA often had to fly doctors from one island to
another to meet its members’ needs.
b) The state was small and isolated, the perfect setting to experiment with new service.

Expansion of business:
After launching the company, Ido and Roy was preparing to deal with
other three customers. They are,
a) BCBS (Blue Cross and Blue Shield) for its 10000 employees and their families
b) TriWest Healthcare Alliance to connect its members with psychologists
c) Optimum health to go into production with its “Now Clinic” service in Texas
New Product Development – “Team Edition”:
Ido and Roy had begun developing a new concept – next generation
product. That is named as “Team Edition”. Generally, patients who needed to be
evaluated by specialists, at first received referral from a primary care physician (PCP)
and specialist would see the patient as per the doctor’s availability. But with Team
Edition, once a PCP felt that a patient needed a specialist, then the PCP would able to
log on to the system and reach out to any of the specialist available online. Thus the
consultation would take place immediately with reducing the time from weeks to
minutes.

Other Market Opportunities:

Though Ido and Roy solely focused on the health insurance companies,
they had believed that the delivery networks – hospitals, chains of health clinic and
other systems of providers could provide better customer service and boost revenues by
adopting American Well’s platform.