• by Tobi Elkin  @tobielkin, June 14, 2016

AccentHealth, a point-of-care patient education media company, on Tuesday announced it acquired PageScience (formerly Precision Health Media), which does programmatic ad and page-level targeting for pharmaceutical marketers. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The acquisition will enable AccentHealth to expand its ability to engage with patients online before and after their office visits.

AccentHealth will deploy PageScience’s patented PageMatch technology to help it target patients when and where they’re most engaged and receptive to health messages, according to Dan Stone, CEO, AccentHealth. 

The proprietary technology analyzes and scores more than 100 million pages per week to deliver branded healthcare advertisements on more than 1,100 premium Web sites based on the contextual relevancy of the page. PageMatch offers healthcare marketers a way to use programmatic buying technology while ensuring that no cookies are used for user retargeting --  a key requirement for some pharmaceutical marketers to satisfy privacy concerns.

The healthcare sector has had unique challenges in adopting programmatic advertising due to those kind of concerns. However, contextual page-level targeting, which focuses message placement based on specific criteria, is beginning to open up the landscape for pharma marketers.

“Point-of-care media has become a digital business—beginning with a fully-addressable digital waiting room TV network that allows us to target specific patient populations with both health and wellness content and brand messages that are most relevant to their needs,” Stone told Real-Time Daily via email.

Last year, AccentHealth introduced an interactive exam room tablet enabling patients to learn more about their conditions or healthy lifestyle while they wait for their doctor.  The tablet supports standard IAB units and pre-roll video ads. 

“Our combination will allow pharma brands to message patients throughout their ‘journey,'" Bill Jennings, CEO, PageScience, told Real-Time Daily via email. PageScience delivers targeted branding to patients as they research symptoms across hundreds of premium sites before and after their doctor visit.  Jennings said PageScience’s “PageMatch” platform scores 100 million pages a week and continuously ranks pages across premium domains in a proprietary data warehouse. It provides continuous data on availability by physical condition.