Meet HealthMedia. It's a healthily growing company with a healthy bottom line focused on finding healthy ways to make a company's employees more, you guessed it, healthy.

OK, that might be a simplistic description of the Ann Arbor-based company, but this much is true: The firm is growing, and growing quickly as it helps people live healthier lives.

The company, born from 30-plus years of behavioral science research at the University of Michigan, has grown to 130 employees. Of those more than 100 of them are based out of Tree Town. And that staff includes 38 new hires in the last year. HealthMedia also expects to grow its payroll by another 30 percent this year.

"We've been growing at a pretty significant rate over the last few years," says Caren Kenney, a spokeswoman for HealthMedia.

The company makes it money by helping health plan providers save more of their own. HealthMedia specializes in scalable behavior change interventions utilizing the power of the web. The firm uses its technology and behavioral science to deliver individually tailored behavior change suggestions and programs. 

The net result has been increased medical compliance and productivity while reducing medical utilization, which, of course, increases profitability for health plans and employers. Clients range from UPS to the Cleveland Clinic to Johnson & Johnson.

HealthMedia is currently working with Aetna to study insomnia and depression. The hope is that HealthMedia's online methods will help improve workplace productivity and reduce healthcare costs. The study will, surprise, study the effectiveness of HealthMedia's methods.
 
Source: Caren Kenney, a spokeswoman for HealthMedia
Writer: Jon Zemke