Young entrepreneurs have had this phrase hammered into their heads: “If you don’t succeed, try, try again.”
But Jeff Arnold prefers a different one:
“If you aren’t passionate about it, find something you are passionate about.”
Improving health care accessibility fuels Arnold, the founder and CEO of digital health company Sharecare, and he doesn’t see that passion going anywhere.
Arnold AB ’18 has created several ventures that have become household names. His career highlights include founding WebMD and building HowStuffWorks, a leading online resource for explaining anything and everything for users. He also acquired the Mobil Travel Guide and transformed it into the global Forbes Travel Guide, where he still serves as chairman.
The Dunwoody native was not always confident in sharing his next big idea; that credit all goes to the University of Georgia, where he studied speech communications.
“I used to be scared of public speaking, so my major served as a building block of how to take a topic, break it down, and then be able to articulate that to others and accomplish a goal,” he says. “To basically be able to apply that to anything, whether it’s raising a family, starting a business, the University of Georgia gave me all that.”
Guests can be reminded of that when they visit Sharecare headquarters in Atlanta and see a giant, 100-pound wooden ‘G’ welcoming visitors (and Sharecare’s many UGA grads) to the sixth floor. Although Arnold paused his studies just a few credits shy of graduation to pursue a job opportunity in the pharmaceutical industry, UGA stayed at the forefront of his mind until he completed his degree 30 years later.
“There’s a good, strong sense of purpose and community at UGA,” Arnold says. “I talk about all the successes in my career, but there have been tons of things along the way that didn’t work. UGA was transformative and allowed me to overcome fears, take risks, and think big.”
Finding the Digital Pulse
It’s a good thing Arnold got comfortable speaking up. Because in 1994, he had an idea that would dramatically improve the quality of life for millions. By combining emerging tech with an emphasis on building meaningful customer relationships, Arnold developed Quality Diagnostic Services (QDS), a company focused on revolutionizing EKGs. Those experiencing cardiac issues outside the doctor’s office could pull out a small, credit card-styled device and hold it to their heart to record their arrythmia episode. QDS would then connect the doctor’s office with that data in real time.
“It’s like taking your car to a mechanic and saying, ‘My car is making a noise,’ but then it doesn’t make the noise at the shop,” Arnold says. “The cool thing looking at it now is that it was telemedicine and remote patient monitoring, which really didn’t become popular until recently, but we were doing it in 1994.”
That’s what it’s always been about for Arnold—using media, data, and technology to help make health care accessible for all. That idea fueled the iconic WebMD, the original source for health data in the early days of the internet. In 1998, Arnold asked the question, “What if health had a homepage?”
Since then, WebMD has become synonymous with finding information on medicine, illness, and well-being.
Click to Cure
Consumers might now take for granted that they can find medical answers at the touch of a screen, but Arnold believes the possibilities for attainable health care are boundless.
Sharecare, a digital health management platform, is like having your medical history and personalized recommendations to improve your health in your pocket. It has been around for more than a decade now, but Arnold constantly pushes the boundaries of what it can do, like with artificial intelligence. And once you solve the problem of accessibility for one, you can do it for all.
“This theme of trust is super important, and this theme of scale is really important,” he says. “How do we provide universal access to knowledge, to resources, to empower better and easier decisions? I’m going to continue that journey of consumer empowerment and making health care better—because I know it is possible. And it’s my passion.”
