World Economic Forum Group Honors Omada Health for Medical Innovation

World Economic Forum’s Technology Pioneers has announced its 2016 honorees for advances in the design, development and deployment of new technologies and innovations, including 22 US companies. Of the various health, environment and energy companies awarded the honor, Omada Health was recognized for its work in helping to combat the public health challenge of chronic disease.

The San Francisco-based company is a digital behavioral medicine organization that works with employers, health plans and health systems to digitally administer intensive behavioral counseling for individuals with elevated risk for chronic diseases, such as type 1 and type 2 diabetes as well as heart disease. Omada Health functions on a pay-for-outcomes model and strives to align its own incentives with those of their partners and members.

“Being recognized as a technology pioneer by the World Economic Forum is an acknowledgement that Omada’s approach to tackling the epidemic of chronic disease has the potential to address a generational public health challenge,” Sean Duffy, Omada Health CEO and co-founder, said in a statement. “Digital behavioral medicine can scale and deliver effective interventions to millions of people who need them the most. In a world where chronic disease now kills more people than infectious disease, the World Economic Forum’s award gives Omada a continued mandate to reach as many at-risk individuals as possible.”

The World Economic Forum’s Technology Pioneers select about 30 companies every year from across the globe to be awarded with this honor. Besides the US-based companies, others are from France, Luxembourg, Canada, Israel, Sweden and the United Kingdom. The Technology Pioneer award winners are selected from a panel of 68 academics, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and corporate executives and are judged on a set of criteria that include innovation, potential impact, working prototype, viability and leadership.

With this honor, Omada Health will have access to the renowned political and business networking system associated with the Technology Pioneers and will also participate in the Annual Meeting of New Champions. Many of the companies awarded in this year’s selection will also participate in the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos Klosters, Switzerland, in the coming year.

“We welcome Omada Health in this group of extraordinary pioneers,” said Fulvia Montresor, Head of Technology Pioneers at the World Economic Forum, in a statement. “Omada is among those companies that help shape the Fourth Industrial Revolution, a technological revolution that will fundamentally alter the way we live, work and relate to one another. Through the platform of the World Economic Forum, it will be able to scale and share its technology and achieve a larger impact.”