Healtheon was a dot-com company founded by James H. Clark and Pavan Nigam. The company's mission was to "use the power of computing and the Internet to revolutionize the healthcare industry, stripping away its inefficiencies and inequities and streamlining it for the new millennium".[1]
In mid-1995, James H. Clark, the founder of Netscape, came up with the idea to modernize technology in the health care industry. He founded Healthscape in early 1996 with funding from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. To avoid confusion with Netscape, the company changed its name to Healtheon.[2]
The company's first big idea was to develop a system for linking insurers and human resources departments. However, the idea failed since insurers dismissed it as too expensive and human resource departments were not interested.[1]
in February 1998, the company announced the acquisition of ActaMed, a medical-records clearinghouse for doctors and insurers, for $150 million, which gave the company a source of revenue.[1][3][4]