Sharecare Launches AskMD for Android

ATLANTA & WASHINGTON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–December 9, 2014–

Sharecare, a comprehensive online health and wellness engagement platform founded by Dr. Mehmet Oz and Jeff Arnold, announced today at the 2014 mHealth Summit that its award-winning app AskMD is now available for download on Android devices. Designed to help you collect information about your symptoms, learn more about common causes, and connect you to the doctors and specialists qualified to treat them, this free app helps you get organized around your health, enabling you to have a more productive doctor’s visit and ultimately get better.

“By launching on Android, AskMD is now available on nearly 95 percent of the smartphones in the United States, which gets us even closer to realizing our vision to transform the health care system to one focused on patient-centered, preventative and comprehensive care for every individual in this country,” said Arnold, Sharecare’s Chairman & CEO. “As we continue to engage more deeply with our users, and empower them to take control of their health and wellness, AskMD makes it incredibly easy for Android users to better understand their real-time health status anytime, anywhere.”

AskMD uses clinically-proven research to help you get from wondering what could be wrong to what you can do about it. By guiding you through a personalized questionnaire that takes into account all your symptoms and other factors, like medications and known conditions, and matching your answers against the latest clinical research, AskMD provides you with results that actually are relevant to you.

“Before a patient even walks into the exam room, AskMD collects and organizes the information doctors need to help our patients get better, making those few minutes that we have together more efficient and ultimately more effective,” said Dr. Oz. “From my patients to the viewers of The Dr. Oz Show, AskMD is a great tool to help people live their healthiest lives. And with cold and flu season upon us, there’s no better time to download AskMD and help you and your family members get better care.”

Beyond helping you find out what’s bothering you at the moment, AskMD has tools and information to help you understand more about your health day–to–day. From notes for a doctor’s appointment to locating a doctor covered by your insurance, from a list of all the prescriptions your mom is taking to a list of the doctors and specialists for your entire family, and animations showing the impact your blood pressure and cholesterol are having on your body, AskMD takes the guesswork out of getting better and being well. AskMD for Android can help you:

• Organize information about symptoms quickly and easily. AskMD, with voice recognition powered by Nuance (NASDAQ: NUAN) – a leader in voice technologies that are reinventing the relationship between people and technology – allows you to simply use your voice to initiate a series of questions relevant to your issue, taking into account all your symptoms and other factors, like medications and known conditions. During this consultation, the app utilizes Pattern Recognition Technology to match your answers against a dynamic clinical knowledge platform, yielding results that actually are relevant to you.
• Identify emergency situations. AskMD clearly labels situations that may be critical or life-threatening, providing you with detailed information and directing you to the closest Emergency Room.
• Find a physician or specialist. Drawing from Sharecare’s robust physician directory powered by its 2012 acquisition of The Little Blue Book, AskMD also locates doctors and specialists qualified to treat your symptoms or condition by area map or list, which also can be filtered by insurance, specialty and distance. You can even click to call and make an appointment directly from the app, and map your route to their office.
• Prepare for your doctor’s appointment. Once you’ve completed your consultation, AskMD arms you with a summary of your results and relevant details, which you can easily access, print or share privately from the app. Organize health information you might need on a daily basis. AskMD stores your medications, insurance information, and contact details for all your doctors and specialists. The app also provides periodic delivery of “smart” push notifications to help improve your overall health and wellness.
• Keep track of your health. AskMD provides you with a personal snapshot of your health, which includes vitals such as height, weight, cholesterol, blood pressure and any known conditions, and uses animation and graphics to show you what those vitals mean to your overall health.
• Care for family and friends. AskMD allows you to create multiple health profiles in the app, so in addition to managing your own health, you also can manage the health of others for whom you care.

The AskMD app, initially launched on the App Store in December 2013 in partnership with Hospital Corporation of America, is optimized for Android 5.0 (Lollipop), and compatible with devices running Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) and higher. AskMD is available for free from Google Play; and also can be accessed via the web at www.sharecare.com/askmd.

About Sharecare

Sharecare is a health and wellness engagement platform that provides people with personalized resources to help them live their healthiest lives. Nearly 40 million people have shared more than 5 billion data points about their health status and habits with Sharecare, which uses that information to create a comprehensive health profile allowing users to access all of their health resources in one place, and dynamically connect to the knowledge, evidence-based programs and health professionals they need. Created by Jeff Arnold and Dr. Mehmet Oz in 2010, Sharecare’s predictive and personalized platform is accessed daily by millions of consumers, including viewers of The Dr. Oz Show, patient populations of the country’s leading hospital systems and every Soldier in the United States Army.

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Sharecare
Jen Martin Hall, 404-307-4649
jen@sharecare.com