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BOSTON — CVS Health has opened a Digital Innovation Lab in Boston that will focus on developing digital services and personalized capabilities to offer customers a more accessible, integrated pharmacy and health experience.
CVS said Thursday that the lab also will serve as a hub for the company’s fast-growing digital team, which will remain based at its Woonsocket, R.I., headquarters.
At the lab, CVS will seek breakthroughs in digital health through innovation in mobile, personalization, multichannel e-commerce, connected health and digital therapeutics. The company, too, aims to form partnerships with promising startups and mature companies in the digital and health care arenas.
“At CVS Health, everything we do is to help people on their path to better health, and digital technologies are an amazingly effective way to achieve this,” Brian Tilzer, senior vice president and chief digital officer at CVS Health, said in a statement. “Digital technologies are ubiquitous and highly configurable — a powerful combination, because it allows us to empower our customers anytime and anywhere. That’s why we are doubling our digital investment, anticipating our customers’ increasing preference to manage their health digitally. The opening of this Innovation Lab is a significant step forward on this path.”
CVS said it plans to introduce an array of new digital services in the coming year and beyond, ranging from beacon capabilities that enable customers to receive in-store pharmacy reminders to applications that turn mobile phones into remote diagnostic tools.
Such capabilities reflect CVS’ efforts to provide customers a connected health experience, by integrating its pharmacy and front-store experience as well as via health tools and services offerings.
CVS noted that the Digital Innovation Lab will empower the digital team’s mission to run like a startup, emphasizing speed to market and impact of digital innovation across the enterprise. The lab’s resources will be used to rapidly test, improve and implement new programs.
“Boston’s position as a hub for health care innovation, coupled with our belief in the transformational capabilities of digital technologies, makes it an ideal environment for CVS Health’s new Digital Innovation Lab,” stated Boston Mayor Martin Walsh. “We’re proud to work alongside CVS Health to foster new advancements in the digital health space.”
Located at 116 Huntington Avenue in Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood, the Digital Innovation Lab will ultimately employ up to 100 team members, complementing the work of the more than 100 digital professionals currently at CVS’ Digital Experience Center in Woonsocket. The company said it’s recruiting talent with expertise in everything from application development and creative digital design, to engineering, coding, usability and customer experience.
