Athenahealth
Epocrates, athenahealth’s clinical reference app, is one of the most trusted tools in medicine, used by more than 2 million physicians. When revenue and engagement began to slip with no clear cause, Digital Authority Partners rebuilt how the company collected and read its data. The result was a 140% increase in revenue to date and a 40% lift in app engagement, on a platform that still leads its category in 2026.
Athenahealth builds cloud-based software for healthcare providers. Its Epocrates app is one of the most widely used clinical reference tools in medicine, trusted by more than 2 million physicians for drug, dosing, and interaction information at the point of care.
Project Summary
Athenahealth’s Epocrates app had scale, more than 2 million physicians, but its analytics could not explain why revenue and engagement were sliding. Digital Authority Partners audited the data, rebuilt collection with tag management and a clean taxonomy, ran A/B tests, and delivered a platform that made the right numbers easy to act on. The payoff was a 140% rise in revenue to date, 40% more app engagement, and a lasting shift to data-driven decisions.
The Challenge
Performance Decline Revenue and Usage Fell
Epocrates watched revenue, usage, and engagement drop with no clear reason. The data on hand could not explain what changed or why.
Data Gaps Critical Data Went Uncaptured
Whole sets of useful behavioral data were never collected, so the team made product calls without the numbers that mattered most.
Data Quality Numbers You Could Not Trust
The data that did exist was disorganized and prone to errors, which turned every report into a question mark.
Decision Speed Decisions Made in the Dark
Hard-to-reach data slowed every choice. Leaders wanted to move with confidence but had little reliable insight to act on.
How we Helped Athenahealth
An Analytics Audit That Found the Why
We started by auditing every analytics touchpoint to learn what the failing metrics were telling us.
- Reviewed the full analytics setup end to end
- Mapped where data was missing or wrong
- Identified the drivers behind falling engagement
- Prioritized fixes by business impact
Tag Management and a New Data Taxonomy
Next we rebuilt the data foundation so every event was captured cleanly and labeled the same way.
- Deployed a tag management solution
- Created a new data taxonomy from scratch
- Standardized event naming across the app
- Closed the gaps that hid user behavior
A/B Testing and User Analysis
With clean data flowing, we ran structured experiments to learn what moved physicians to engage.
- Ran A/B tests on key app experiences
- Analyzed how real users moved through the app
- Validated changes against live behavior
- Fed every learning back into the roadmap
A New Analytics Platform and Data Culture
Finally we gave stakeholders a platform where the right data was simple to find, sort, and act on.
- Implemented a sortable, accessible analytics platform
- Put clean data in front of decision makers
- Built reporting around the metrics that mattered
- Established a lasting data-driven culture
What we Achieved
The analytics overhaul paid off where it counts. Revenue to date climbed 140% once the team could build decisions around clear, trustworthy numbers.
Engagement rose 40% once Epocrates could see which features physicians valued and double down on them. Clean data led straight to a stronger product experience.
Surveys completed by the 2 million-plus doctors on the app grew 36%, giving the company a steady stream of first-party insight to guide future decisions.
Years on, Epocrates remains a category leader. The platform draws roughly 49,000 organic visits a month and ranks for more than 8,000 keywords, with a Domain Rating of 71 out of 100, a measure of the durable digital foundation built during the engagement.
