Staywell Custom Communications partners with Self Care Decisions to provide online applications for health care providers

Custom health communications company StayWell Custom Communications (SCC), a division of MediMedia USA, has announced an exclusive strategic alliance with Self Care Decisions, LLC, the leading provider of decision-support care guides for consumers via the Internet and mobile applications.

Through this strategic alliance, StayWell Custom Communications will be offering a range of online applications for health care providers and payor organizations designed to guide consumers to the appropriate response to common health care issues. These tools will be offered by SCC in addition to the already impressive and industry leading collection of solutions currently being used by its hundreds of health care clients. The Self Care Decisions tools, which can be custom branded to the sponsoring client organization, provide people with decision support and care advice for common health symptoms and minor injuries via the Internet and their handheld devices.

The applications include:

• HouseCalls Symptom Checker - an online decision support and care advice tool
• SymptomMD - the new iPhone/iTouch application that puts symptom decision support in a consumer's pocket

All of the above are based on medical protocols written by acclaimed authors Dr. Barton Schmitt and Dr. David Thompson, endorsed and distributed by the American Academy of Pediatrics, and currently used by more than 10,000 physician practices and 400 nurse advice help lines nationwide. The tools provide valuable information to consumers to help them self-manage their own health care, reduce unnecessary office visits, save them time, worry, calls to physicians, and avoid after-hour trips to urgent care facilities.

"Self Care Decisions' range of patient information solutions is a perfect complement to our robust online content offering and provides our clients with a way to deliver to their consumers valuable, action-oriented information to improve their health while fully supporting our clients' objectives," said StayWell Custom Communications president and CEO Trent Sterling.

Consistent with SCC's approach to all its solutions, clients who use these online tools have the ability to package and brand each solution to their own organization to make it a totally custom offering. The iPhone/iTouch application can even be programmed to guide consumers to the sponsoring organization's selected providers for care.

"Partnering with StayWell Custom Communications is a natural fit for our organization. They are a clear market leader in health content and online solutions and we're thrilled to be able to support their robust client offering," said Sue Altman, Chief Operating Officer of Self Care Decisions, LLC.