Consumer health and wellness reference monolith WebMD recently announced that the information-as-a-service company acquired ADDitude. We don’t mean WebMD is getting haughty. ADDitude is an information reference, support, and encouragement resource for people who have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The website also serves family, friends, caregivers, and medical professionals associated with people with ADHD.
WebMD’s ADDitude acquisition makes sense in terms of scale. According to a WebMD corporate release, WebMD is one of a group of websites that collectively have more than 250 million visitors each month. More than 75 million people consult with ADDitude each year. WebMD is an information resource for a wide range of health and medical issues, questions, diseases, and conditions. Pulling a major ADHD information source under the WebMD umbrella will help more people access information about the common neurological condition. So the acquisition advances ADDitude’s mission and adds to WebMD’s trove of health and wellness information.
I use WebMD as a reference multiple times a month and I’ll bet you do, too. The Internet is an information equalizer and trusted information sources are of inestimable value. In light of recent headlines about big tech being too big and questions about a few sites that some believe have too much control of personal data, it may be helpful to look just a bit behind the WebMD curtain.
WebMD is owned by Internet Brands which is a company that focuses on four vertical information categories: health, automotive, legal, and home/travel. Internet Brands in turn is a portfolio company owned by KKR and Temasek, two major global investment companies. Internet Brands touts its leadership in financial app generation in the auto industry, web presence solutions for health and legal professions, its frequent flyer community, and travel recommendations. We are not saying or implying anything negative about WebMD health information. It does, however, bear keeping in mind that the payoff for the trusted medical data is clients for Internet Brands web presence services. According to Internet Brands site, the company has 50,000 clients in the health professions.
