Boots is to launch a health and wellness portal online in the second half of this year in partnership with US health services provider WebMD.
The portal will marry Nasdaq-listed WebMD’s consumer healthcare information with the Boots brand. It will sit alongside Boots’ health information tool, AskBoots, which it developed in partnership with the British Medical Journal.
A Boots spokeswoman said: “WebMD has a wealth of online consumer health assets and expertise and was therefore a natural choice of partner to develop an online consumer health portal with. This will build on the current health information and advice available on Boots.com.”
The site will include health news and features, information on medical conditions, guides and interactive tools and applications. It will have a symptom checker, health trackers and calculators, alongside health and wellbeing videos.
WebMD said the cost of developing the new site will be shared between the two, and that there will be a sales operation attached to it.
WebMD highlighted the size of the online advertising market in the UK, but Boots would not comment on how it would earn revenue from the site, or how substantial it expects the revenue stream to be.
Boots will market the portal in stores, via links from Boots.com and through messages sent to customers in its loyalty scheme.
The health and beauty retailer said it is too early to confirm the exact details of its marketing plan.
WebMD said it attracts more than 50 million unique users each month to its network of websites, which includes WebMD Health and eMedicine. In North America it has already signed similar partnerships with retailers including vitamin and nutrition retailer GNC.
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