Wellio is an online marketplace where parents, pediatricians and caregivers can find, explore and access digital health and wellness tools designed with the needs of children and families in mind. Children are not “just little adults” and families deserve tools and solutions that meet their specific needs. Wellio was created to facilitate the development of high quality, accessible, family-centered tools. By bridging the gap between traditional healthcare and technological innovation, Wellio has the potential to transform the way families access and utilize family-centered care. Our curated approach and user-friendly platform provides a trusted and convenient experience for modern parents and caregivers. While Wellio doesn’t provide care directly, we connect you to tools that can assist with everything from parenting and educational testing to full virtual healthcare. Wellio is the app store for families!

A dizzying 350,000 health apps¹ are currently on the market suggesting that people are frustrated relying on a broken healthcare system to care for them and their families, and are looking to technology for help. We want, and deserve, to own our health data and to be at the center of our care. And we urgently need access to care, like mental health services, that is affordable and accessible. But knowing which tools to trust is a challenge, especially for children and families. Wellio provides a curated marketplace of pediatrician-reviewed digital health tools purpose-built for children and families that are vetted through rigorous standards and can be seamlessly prescribed in under 5 seconds during a routine office visit. Wellio is searchable and sortable for essential features like target age, available languages, literacy level and out-of-pocket cost. Our mission is to bring digital transformation to child and family health, starting by bridging the gap between trusted pediatricians and their digital native patients. Wellio empowers pediatricians and their patients with high quality, accessible and affordable solutions to their patient needs right at their fingertips.

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¹ 1. IQVIA. Digital Health Trends 2021. https://www.iqvia.com/insights/the-iqvia-institute/reports/digital-health-trends-2021. Accessed Sept 28, 2023.

Good question! “Digital health and wellness tools” are health or wellness-focused services like software, smart devices, apps or virtual care platforms that use technology to make healthcare better - easier to access, more affordable and more effective. Common examples might be apps, devices (like smart watches) or telehealth services that allow people to care for themselves and their families whenever, and wherever they are. We believe that nothing beats an effective doctor-patient relationship but technology can superpower these relationships by making great healthcare accessible to all people all the time.

Families can easily find the right tool for every need and every child, and see what board-certified pediatricians think about them.

Pediatricians can find, explore and vet digital health tools against objective evidence-based quality criteria that matter for children and families, see what other pediatricians are using, instantly recommend tools for their patients and even ‘close the loop’ through a patient dashboard.

Health Systems can meaningfully address physician burnout by helping providers help their patients, and boost patient engagement by connecting to them through a platform of helpful digital health tools.

Payers and Employers can offer a wide range of child and family benefits through a single delightful platform.

Mission-driven Innovators can reach more customers through trusted pediatric providers, and access bundled service packages that lower barriers to distribution, clinical validation and reimbursement.

Families flourish because wellness won’t be once a year in their pediatrician’s office, but whenever they need it, in their homes, schools and communities.

1. 90% of the nation’s $4.1 trillion in annual healthcare expenditures are for people with chronic and mental health conditions.²

2. These conditions start in childhood, when educational attainment and baseline health status are shaped.³ Indeed, 40% of school-aged children have at least one chronic health condition.⁴

3. In order to help children, we need to help their doctors. Children are a vulnerable population⁵ and pediatric primary care has become the “catch all” for every need. Today, the well child check includes recommended screening for everything from food insecurity to gun violence as well as the management of chronic illnesses like asthma and the exploding adolescent mental health crisis. Parents (and society at large) depend on pediatricians to ‘own’ the only holistic assessment of a child’s needs, all in a 12 minute annual visit.

4. The pediatric workforce is in crisis⁶. One in five pediatricians plans to leave their job in the next year, and nearly half of those considering leaving in the next five years plan to leave medicine entirely ⁷. Fewer pediatric residency graduates combined with burnout and moral injury from professional commitment with inadequate resources has resulted in real workforce shortages that are projected to worsen in the near term.

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² Buttorff C, Ruder T, Bauman M. Multiple Chronic Conditions in the United States [PDF -393kb] Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corp.; 2017.

³ Lee JO, Kosterman R, Jones TM, Herrenkohl TI, Rhew IC, Catalano RF, Hawkins JD. Mechanisms linking high school graduation to health disparities in young adulthood: a longitudinal analysis of the role of health behaviours, psychosocial stressors, and health insurance. Public Health. 2016 Oct;139:61-69. doi: 10.1016/j.puhe.2016.06.010. Epub 2016 Jul 6. PMID: 27395333; PMCID: PMC5061606.

⁴ https://www.cdc.gov/healthyschools/modules/chronic_conditions/2017_Presentation_Chronic_Health_Co nditions_in_School_Settings-7-v-2.pptx

⁵ https://www.nifa.usda.gov/sites/default/files/resource/Vulnerable%20Populations.pdf

⁶ Robert J. Vinci; The Pediatric Workforce: Recent Data Trends, Questions, and Challenges for the Future. Pediatrics June 2021; 147 (6): e2020013292. 10.1542/peds.2020-013292

⁷ https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/healthcare/our -insights/improving-pediatrician-well-being-and-career-satisfaction

Our platform brings together digital health and wellness tools designed for the specific needs of children and families and reflects the breadth of solutions currently available on the market. Wellio offers tools for everything from age-specific sleep and nutrition coaching to full scale mental health services. Try Wellio today

Wellio searches far and wide for the most useful tools for families, carefully evaluate them for safety, efficacy and quality, and bring them together in a delightful app. But that’s not all! With so many health and wellness services on the market, it can feel like the ‘wild west’ out there. Wellio is here to help. Tools are included in the Wellio marketplace if they have been identified by our Pediatric Digital Health Consortium as “useful”, meaning, families , pediatricians or pediatric specialists are using them. Pediatricians evaluate each tool and provide ratings of its usefulness. Useful is good, but safe and effective is better so we don’t stop there! Each tool is also evaluated by board-certified pediatricians to meet rigorous privacy, safety and quality standards that matter to families. In addition to verifying essential features like data security, privacy, family-centered design and freedom from advertisements, Wellio is developing a proprietary framework for evaluating pediatric digital health and wellness tools using evidence and best-practice. Check it out!

We’re so glad you asked! To give you the most trusted information, Wellio rates tools both subjectively (based on expert opinion) and objectively (based on our evidence-based quality framework).

Subjective ratings are provided by pediatricians and parents/users based on how useful the tool is, in their opinion, and is reflected by a rating of 1 to 5 stars, much like the App Store. Objective ratings happen in two ways:

1. Verification of essential features like adherence to data security and privacy standards (eg HIPAA), family-centered design and freedom from advertisements is performed for each tool.

2. Scoring of tools is based on the Digital Health Scorecard Framework put forth by Mathews et al in 2019 which assigns a global score based on evaluation of tools in four performance domains: technical, clinical, usability and cost. Wellio has adapted this framework to reflect the specific needs of families. For example, optimal design for children must include age-specific interfaces for the user, and their caregiver, while maintaining privacy for the user.

Wellio understands the importance of maintaining the privacy of patient information, and takes the confidentiality of any such information provided by any user of the Wellio app seriously. Wellio is committed to using and disclosing patient information in accordance with applicable laws, including the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). To the extent a pediatrician using the Wellio app requests that Wellio send selected resources to a pediatrician’s patient, or otherwise requests Wellio to create, receive, maintain, or transmit protected health information on behalf of the pediatrician, the terms of Wellio’s Business Associate Agreement apply. Users of the app should only provide patient information to the extent the user has the authority to do so under applicable law. Wellio is not responsible for vetting whether a user has obtained any required consent from any particular patient or otherwise has the authority to send information to patients via the Wellio app.

Wellio takes regulatory compliance and conflict of interest seriously. We do not recommend any particular digital health solution, or compensate providers for recommending particular solutions. We endeavor to include and evaluate all relevant family-focused digital health tools and do not collect any money from digital health companies for listing or favorable treatment. Wellio’s ratings and quality framework are fully transparent and detailed here. Wellio makes information about evidence-based solutions available to providers so that they can decide what resources will be most helpful to their patients.

We've got you covered! Check out our blog with educational articles about the latest pediatric digital health trends. And if you've got questions, just shoot us a message!