Jiff raises $18M for employee health tech platform

Despite all the changes in American healthcare over the past few years, half of all Americans still get their insurance from their employer.

As more large employers self-insure, they’re under pressure to manage the health care costs racked up by their employees — in short, to keep them from running up so many doctor bills. This creates a nice opportunity for companies that make technology platforms designed to engage employees in health and wellness programs.

One such company, Jiff, builds connected health platforms for large companies (5,000 to 50,000 employees). The company’s white-label platform integrates with an employer’s existing benefits programs on one side, and connects with a variety of consumer health apps and devices on the other.

Using the Jiff platform, companies can build employee wellness programs that use fitness devices and apps to monitor things like activity, weight, stress, sleep, and other metrics. Employees who registered a certain amount of exercise on their FitBit, for example, might get a discount on their insurance co-payments as a reward.

Palo Alto, California-based Jiff says it’s now raised an $18 million round led by Venrock. Aberdare Ventures and Aeris Capital also threw in. Jiff has now raised a total of $25.8 million in venture capital.

“Self-insured employers spend 30 percent of all healthcare dollars in the US, around $670 billion — it’s staggering,” Jiff CEO Derek Newell said in a statement. “And until Jiff, there was no way for employers to aggregate and offer these digital tools to employees, collect the data they create, and use that data to build personalized health incentives and challenge programs.”

“The investment in Jiff is consistent with our strategy of focusing on companies that help employers get more value for their healthcare investments,” said Venrock partner Bryan Roberts. “All employees are different so incentives should be too, and Jiff is the only platform that allows employee level personalization. And that’s just the beginning of what Jiff is working on.”

Jiff says it will use the funds to expand its sales and marketing team, grow its network of sales and distribution partners, and to build out its network of digital health partners.