Remedy Media launches wellness site with UC Berkeley

Remedy Health (New York), which operates a group of highly trafficked, consumer-oriented health and wellness websites, has redesigned its publication of the Berkeley Wellness Letter (a longstanding print publication) to create a new platform for connecting with readers: BerkeleyWellness.com. The site is expected to draw over one million monthly visitors within the first quarter of launch.

The site features exclusive content from the School of Public Health at UC Berkeley, and will include interactive quizzes and assessments, slide shows (video is in the works), and expert-reviewed content. “This expands our mission of public health education and we are pleased to be working with Remedy, our long-standing digital publishing and technology partner, to deliver this important resource for public health,” said John Swartzberg, MD, Clinical Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley and chair of the editorial board of the UC Berkeley Wellness Letter, in a statement.

But of equal interest is how the site adapts web-publishing practices to the influence of interactive tablets like the Apple iPad, according to Remedy Health executives. Content scrolls through a wide screen—tailored to the finger-movement action of tablet users. Content is presented in blocks, mimicking the tile design of tablet presentations, and there are no “guardrails” (the usual left- and right-hand borders of a conventional website).

Rebecca Farwell, chief content officer for Remedy, says that the site has a number of features that change the usual dynamics of sponsored content. That material loads, in many cases, as apps rather than as embedded content in a web page; it also incorporates a feature known as “lazy load,” which means that viewers are tracked when the content appears on the tablet screen (rather than clicking through to a distinct page). Overall, navigation occurs by finger-scrolling rather than the static index of a conventional website.

Jim Curtis, chief revenue officer of Remedy, calls the overall approach for sponsors “native content display”—“To a certain degree, the advertiser controls their own app within the site, where they can upload new content as they require, and presented in a way that encourages reader interaction,” he says.