CVS Health today announced the official opening of its Digital Innovation Lab in Boston, a facility that is focused on developing cutting-edge digital services and personalized capabilities that offer an accessible and integrated personal pharmacy and health experience. The Lab will serve as a vital hub for the rapidly growing digital team at CVS Health, which will remain headquartered in Woonsocket, R.I.
“At CVS Health, everything we do is to help people on their path to better health, and digital technologies are an amazingly effective way to achieve this,” said Brian Tilzer, Senior Vice President and Chief Digital Officer for CVS Health. “Digital technologies are ubiquitous and highly configurable – a powerful combination, because it allows us to empower our customers anytime and anywhere. That’s why we are doubling our digital investment, anticipating our customers’ increasing preference to manage their health digitally. The opening of this Innovation Lab is a significant step forward on this path.”
The launch of the new Digital Innovation Lab is the latest manifestation of CVS Health’s commitment to prioritizing digital health. The new lab is staffed with developers, product managers, digital strategists, and user- experience designers. CVS has increased its focus on healthcare this year by making significant investments in telehealth visits with doctors at some of its MinuteClinics, sending text messages to customers about their prescriptions and sharing EHR data with select providers.
The Digital Innovation Lab will embody the CVS Health digital team’s mission to run like a startup, accelerating speed-to-market and impact of digital innovation across the enterprise, by using the resources of the Lab to rapidly test, improve and implement new programs.
“Boston’s position as a hub for healthcare innovation, coupled with our belief in the transformational capabilities of digital technologies, makes it an ideal environment for CVS Health’s new Digital Innovation Lab,” said Mayor Martin J. Walsh. “We’re proud to work alongside CVS Health to foster new advancements in the digital health space.”
Primary focuses of the Lab will include the exploration of breakthroughs for digital health through innovation in mobile, personalization, multi-channel e-commerce, connected health and digital therapeutics. CVS Health will further its pace and breadth of innovation through partnerships with promising startups and mature companies alike in the digital and health care space.
The Lab is also committed to developing future-looking health care solutions. For example, CVS Health plans to introduce a wide array of new digital services in the coming year and beyond, ranging from beacon capabilities that allow customers to receive in-store pharmacy reminders, to applications that turn mobile phones into remote diagnostic tools. CVS Health services reach 100 million customers annually, meaning these innovations are poised to make a significant impact in helping people manage their health.
The Digital Innovation Lab, located at 116 Huntington Avenue in Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood, will ultimately employ up to 100 team members, complementing the work of the more than 100 digital professionals currently at the company’s Digital Experience Center in Woonsocket. The company is actively recruiting talent with expertise in everything from application development and creative digital design, to engineering, coding, usability and customer experience.
