The Castlight Ecosystem is a foundational pillar at Castlight—and one of our key offerings to our customers. For more than a decade, our Ecosystem mission has always been the same: to deliver best-in-class digital health solutions to our members.

As of mid-2022, we have established relationships and pre-defined integrations with about 30 Ecosystem partners across 20 different health and wellbeing areas (and counting!).

Castlight customers offer an average of 20 integrated benefits, including an average of three of our Ecosystem partner solutions. Between our Ecosystem partners and customer-specific vendors, Castlight’s connected navigation platform supports more than 4,000 integrated benefits today.

Together with our market-leading Ecosystem partners and customers, we have been able to achieve incredible results, including (but not limited to):

Reflecting on this journey, we want to share a behind-the-scenes look at lessons we’ve learned while working with our amazing Ecosystem partners:  

Lesson 1: Partner with the Best to Build Trust with Customers and See Meaningful Results 

In the early days of digital health, we saw the promise this new industry had to fundamentally change the way healthcare is delivered and result in better health outcomes at lower cost. However, we also saw buyer confusion and a broken procurement process in the market, characterized by mistrust. Seeing this, we created our Castlight Ecosystem to demystify digital health, take complexity out of the process, and serve as a vehicle that would bring pioneering and highly vetted digital health solutions to our customers and their populations. 

To gain our customers’ trust with digital health and the Castlight Ecosystem, we developed a uniform selection, review, and integration process to curate our Ecosystem with best-in-class partners. We selected partners who have the strongest clinical foundation, demonstrated the highest cost savings, and have a strong track record of delivering exceptional member experiences. 

Our efforts have paid off, as each of our Ecosystem partners has proven their care model and their ability to impact outcomes. Some have even implemented shared savings and/or value-based care models, ultimately driving further cost savings for our customers. We’ve seen the positive impacts of this firsthand, as many of our customers have received upwards of 2X ROI when working with our Ecosystem partners. 

Lesson 2: Pairing the Best in Digital Health with the Best in Connected Navigation Leads to an Enhanced Member Experience and Improved Health Outcomes 

Our Ecosystem thesis is that Castlight’s connected navigation experience should bring out the best version of our digital health partners. This is why we decided to make deep integrations our standard—because it’s this type of integration that will amplify the best capabilities of our Ecosystem partners.   

Together, we focused on getting the hard things right to make it easiest for our members. We’ve invested heavily in our navigation platform and its connectivity to our Ecosystem partners so it has flexibility to scale with our partners as they grow. In addition to deeply integrating with our digital health partners via a real-time two-way data exchange, we thoroughly embed our partners throughout the Castlight experience, including our high-touch Castlight Care Guides. Our Ecosystem partners are integrated into the daily workflow of our expert Guides so they can better understand the desired impact of each Partner program—it’s much more than just steering a member to a program and then forgetting about it. 

Embedding our Ecosystem partners throughout the entire Castlight experience allows us to provide members with timely and personalized recommendations to digital health programs no matter how they choose to engage with the platform. Over time, we’ve grown with our partners to scale this technology infrastructure and fine-tuned our personalization engine to make sure every member receives meaningful, tailored nudges to help them take the next best step in their personal health journey. 

And we know that pairing Castlight’s connected navigation solution with our best-in-class digital health partners provides the highest value for our customers and their population. Our Ecosystem partners yield impressive and impactful engagement rates independently—but when paired with Castlight, the engagement rate is even higher. For example, our Diabetes condition management Ecosystem partners yield an average of 20% engagement on their own. But with Castlight, the average engagement rate more than doubles to 43%. 

Lesson 3: Measuring Clinical and Financial Impact Is Paramount 

We believe it’s important to show, not tell. Clinical and financial outcomes are our primary metrics. Our solutions must continue to deliver value consistently every day and with every interaction. This is why Castlight actively tracks engagement and cost metrics across our Ecosystem.  

In fact, we know that when Castlight’s personalization engine recommends an Ecosystem program to a member based on their health profile, the member is 3X more likely to enroll in the program—and that level of engagement translates to increased savings for the plan and the member. 

A Castlight cost analysis showed that members with diabetes who participate in a diabetes Ecosystem program save an average of $5,200 compared to members with diabetes who don’t participate. For musculoskeletal (MSK) programs, the average increased savings is $2,200 per participant, and for behavioral health, it’s $2,170. 

By maintaining accountability based on clinical outcomes, we have the confidence to promote our Ecosystem partners to our customers. Each year, we provide our customers with a year-over-year clinical and financial outcomes review to tell an impactful story while also giving them invaluable insights into where they may need to invest more effort. And because our Ecosystem is grounded in clinical rigor while also considering whole-person health, we are poised to implement digital health solutions addressing each customer’s specific area of need, when they need it.   

Moving Forward 

Our goal is to create the gold standard Ecosystem program for our customers, members, and digital health partners by continuing to invest in the breadth of Ecosystem partners to choose from, the depth of integration for a seamless member experience, and the quantitative analytics to drive accountability.   

The future is bright—especially with our recent combination with Vera Whole Health.  We are excited for greater clinical collaboration with our Ecosystem partners to help our members live happier and healthier lives. We are digital health believers and enthusiasts, and we can’t wait to continue supporting more exceptional next-generation companies in our growing Ecosystem. 

Interested in joining as a Castlight Ecosystem partner or learning more about the Ecosystem? Say hello here.