A Sunnyvale medical device company best known for its ubiquitous at-home Covid-19 tests is planning on big growth in Sacramento.
IHealth Labs Inc. has moved into a new office at 8950 Cal Center Drive in Sacramento, where it plans to expand a program aimed at helping patients better manage chronic conditions.
Company CEO Jack Feng said the new office is about 3,000 square feet and has 20 employees working out of it. IHealth plans to add 200 employees over the next two years as it expands its iHealth Unified Care platform.
IHealth became a major supplier of at-home Covid-19 tests to the federal government during the pandemic — its orange-packaged tests were sent to homes all over the country as part of the federal government’s free program. The company has been manufacturing personal care and medical devices like smart scales, thermometers, blood pressure monitors and pulse oximeters since 2010.
Five years ago, it launched Unified Care, a service aimed at helping patients with chronic diseases like diabetes better manage their conditions at home. The program uses smart medical devices to remotely collect data on patients’ vital signs. IHealth care providers offer support and coaching, monitor data and notify the patient’s primary care provider when necessary.
Feng said Unified Care fills the gaps between when patients see a doctor and when they go home and manage their condition themselves.
“The modern health care system was built for acute visits,” Feng said. “But for chronic conditions, it’s a lifetime condition, and so the time the patient spends at home is more important than the care in the clinic.”
IHealth launched Unified Care in the Sacramento region. It had a 500-square-foot office in Elk Grove where it ran its clinical trials for the program. It enrolled 1,000 patients to start. It now has more than 10,000 patients, has contracted with 40 local clinics, with six more in the works, and has partnerships with Sutter Independent Physicians and Hill Physicians Medical Group.
“Chronic condition management is in very high demand,” Feng said.
Over the next two years, Feng said he's targeting to enroll 50,000 patients. He also plans for the company to expand the diseases it treats — it’s currently mostly focused on diabetes and hypertension — and enroll patients nationwide.
“We do see that there are more and more chronic conditions patients across the country, not just in Sacramento,” Feng said.
In an earlier version of this story, iHealth Labs CEO Jack Feng misstated the number of local clinics the company has partners with for its Unified Care program.
