Healtheon was a

dot-com company A dot-com company, or simply a dot-com (alternatively rendered dot.com, dot com, dotcom or .com), is a company that does most of its business on the Internet, usually through a website on the World Wide Web that uses the popular top-level domain ". ...

founded by

James H. Clark James Henry Clark (born March 23, 1944) is an American entrepreneur and computer scientist. He founded several notable Silicon Valley technology companies, including Silicon Graphics, Netscape, myCFO, and Healtheon. His research work in comput ...

and Pavan Nigam. The company's mission was to "use the power of computing and the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

to revolutionize the

healthcare industry The healthcare industry (also called the medical industry or health economy) is an aggregation and integration of sectors within the economic system that provides goods and services to treat patients with curative, preventive, rehabilitative, ...

, stripping away its inefficiencies and inequities and streamlining it for the new millennium". In 1999, the company was acquired by

WebMD WebMD is an American corporation known primarily as an online publisher of news and information pertaining to human health and well-being. The site includes information pertaining to drugs. It is one of the top healthcare websites. It was fou ...

History

In mid-1995,

, the founder of Netscape, came up with the idea to modernize technology in the health care industry. He founded Healthscape in early 1996 with funding from

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Kleiner Perkins, formerly Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), is an American venture capital firm which specializes in investing in incubation, early stage and growth companies. Since its founding in 1972, the firm has backed entrepreneur ...

. To avoid confusion with Netscape, the company changed its name to Healtheon. The company's first big idea was to develop a system for linking insurers and

human resources Human resources (HR) is the set of people who make up the workforce of an organization, business sector, industry, or economy. A narrower concept is human capital, the knowledge and skills which the individuals command. Similar terms include ...

departments. However, the idea failed since insurers dismissed it as too expensive and human resource departments were not interested. In 1997, Mike Long became

chief executive officer A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especial ...

of the company. Five months later, the company formed a research and development partnership with Brown & Toland, a network of 1,600 physicians in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

. in February 1998, the company announced the acquisition of ActaMed, a medical-records clearinghouse for doctors and insurers, for $150 million, which gave the company a source of revenue. In August 1998, the company filed for an

initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investme ...

, but the offering was cancelled in October 1998, after stock prices dropped due to the 1998 Russian financial crisis. In February 1999, the company completed its IPO and became a

public company A public company is a company whose ownership is organized via shares of stock which are intended to be freely traded on a stock exchange or in over-the-counter markets. A public (publicly traded) company can be listed on a stock exchange ( ...

and the stock price rose 400% on its first day of trading. On April 21, 1999, the company announced the acquisition of MedE America for $478 million in stock. On May 20, 1999, the company announced a merger with

References

{{Dot-com Bubble 1996 establishments in California American companies established in 1996 1999 initial public offerings 1999 mergers and acquisitions Defunct online companies of the United States Defunct software companies of the United States Dot-com bubble