athenahealth, Inc. is a publicly traded American company that provides network-enabled services for healthcare and point-of-care mobile apps to drive clinical and financial results for its hospital and ambulatory clients in the United States. athenahealth has a network of more than 100,000 providers and 98 million patients and offers a suite of services to manage medical records, revenue cycle, patient engagement, care coordination, and population health.

The company was founded in 1997 in San Diego, California; it is now headquartered in Watertown, Massachusetts and has grown to include operational sites in Belfast, Maine; Atlanta, Georgia; Austin, Texas; Princeton, New Jersey; and Chennai, Bangalore, and Pune, India.

athenahealth began in 1997 as Athena Women's Health, a women's health and birthing center in San Diego, California. Cofounders Jonathan Bush and Todd Park set out to create a comfortable and comprehensive center, where mothers could receive "a warm and supportive environment, personal attention, better care, and superior results" while the back-end business was "a ruthlessly efficient operation, with a laser focus on costs."

The birthing center excelled at delivering healthy babies: Only 10% of babies were delivered by C-section, one third of the national average, and 90% of mothers were able to breastfeed their newborns, beating the national average of 67% at the time. Yet while quality increased, costs followed in suit, and Bush and Park eventually closed their birthing center and started a medical data company called athenahealth on the heels of the Internet boom of 1999.

In 1998, venture funder Mark Wilson offered to buy athenahealth’s software for $11 million. Bush and Park turned down the offer but followed Wilson’s instinct, transitioning from a business model from birthing centers to a vision of building the healthcare internet. They transformed Athena Women’s Health to athenahealth, Inc., pulling in Ed Park, Park’s younger brother and engineer, to develop a practice management system. Leaving clinical work in the hands of capable providers, their new business endeavor aimed to “let doctors be doctors” and remove incessant and burdensome paperwork off doctors’ desks.

The start of 2000 saw two important moments in time: athenahealth’s first client, Anchor Medical Associates, went live on athenaCollector; and in February, its first electronic claim was submitted. While its first office opened its doors in Waltham, Massachusetts in 2002, athenahealth moved to Watertown, Massachusetts in 2005 and is still headquartered there today.

athenahealth announced an initial public offering of its common stock on June 22, 2007. The offering was completed on September 20, 2007, at a price of $18 per share. It trades on the NASDAQ exchange under the symbol ATHN.

Since moving its headquarters to Watertown in 2005, athenahealth has created campuses in: Chennai, India, in 2005; Belfast, Maine, in 2008; Princeton, New Jersey, in 2013; Atlanta, Georgia, and San Francisco, California, in 2014; Austin, Texas, in 2015; and Bangalore and Pune, India, in 2017.

athenaOne is athenahealth's fully integrated suite of cloud-based services, combining practice management (athenaCollector), an electronic health record (EHR) system (athenaClinicals), and care coordination (athenaCommunicator) into a single packaged offering.

athenahealth’s first product, athenaCollector, a cloud-based revenue cycle and practice management service, rolled out in 2000. Built by Ed Park, the revenue cycle management system formed the foundation of athenaNet, athenahealth’s web-based system at large. (Ed Park would go on to become athenahealth’s Chief Operating Officer and member of its board.)

In 2006, the company launched athenaClinicals, reported as the "first economically sustainable, service-based" electronic medical records (EMR) system. athenaClinicals has been ranked as leading the market in EHR usability, due to its productivity and ability to reduce providers’ work, effectiveness of delivering patient care, and intuitive user interface.

In 2008, athenahealth introduced athenaCommunicator to manage phone calls. Since then, the product has evolved into a suite of "patient engagement services," including a patient portal, patient self-scheduling solution, and live operator service to better help patients to schedule appointments, reschedule appointments, and make payments.

In 2013, the company purchased the Epocrates mobile brand, and continued to occupy Epocrates’s offices in Princeton, New Jersey and San Francisco, California. As an athenahealth service, Epocrates aggregates treatment information, including dosing and contraindications, to provide clinical decision support in the prescribing moments of care.

Epocrates drug monographs have also been embedded into the athenaClinicals EHR system to enhance productivity and reduce time not spent on patients.

athenahealth's More Disruption Please (MDP) program was launched in 2011. The initiative is both a partner program and an incubator environment for independent companies to develop products and services connected to athenahealth's ecosystem.

In 2014, athenahealth created the More Disruption Please accelerator, an opportunity for young startups still finding their legs to begin developing in athenahealth’s MDP space. “The goal of [the MDP accelerator] is to lower the barrier of entry for the best solutions to help us build the healthcare Internet,” said Mandira Singh, director of the More Disruption Please program. In its first full year, the accelerator added five companies to its portfolio.

athenahealth launched MDP Labs in 2017. The program invites all entrepreneurs, from fledgling startups to mature companies, to innovate in healthcare and fix what’s broken. athenahealth’s MDP Labs offers workspace in its downtown San Francisco office, tailored programming, dedicated mentorship, opportunities for partnerships and funding, and exposure to potential clients.

In January 2015, athenahealth announced the acquisition of RazorInsights, a "leader in cloud-based EHR and financial solutions" for rural, critical access, and community hospitals. The purchase extended athenahealth’s established position in the outpatient market into the 50-bed and under inpatient care environment, which makes up nearly one third of the hospital market.

In February 2015, athenahealth announced that it had purchased webOMR, the web-based clinical applications and EHR platform developed by Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. athenahealth collaborated with BIDMC on the development of athenahealth's acute care service offering, using Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital-Needham, a 58-bed community hospital, as the alpha development site.

athenahealth announced its acquisition of Praxify Technologies in June 2017. Praxify’s platform strategy and mobile capabilities enable seamless workflows and communication at moments of care, and its technology will be integrated into athenahealth’s cloud-based platform, allowing for meaningful collaborations between developers on forthcoming applications.