What Does the Future Digital Health Ecosystem Look Like?

Earlier this year, The Consumer Technology Association (CTA)® released new research that looks at the state of the U.S. consumer health technology ecosystem and offers recommendations for health companies and providers to increase adoption of digital health solutions.

According to their press release and the report summary, the report examines:

• The role of digital health solutions in the U.S. healthcare environment.
• The consumer perspective on digital health solutions, including awareness, usage, perceptions, and sentiment.
• The influence of digital health solutions on HCPs’ workflow, including understanding how these solutions help reduce burdens on the healthcare systems.

At Gozio, we’re curious about what technologies consumers are most interested in, how they are using them, and if that is changing anything with how they interact with their providers. Data was collected from 1,000 healthcare consumers.

Here were some highlights shared about consumer adoption of digital health solutions:

• Consumers cite taking control of their health and the features of digital health solutions as the top reason for adoption, followed by accessibility, reliability and health insurance coverage.
• 60% of consumers surveyed currently or previously used telehealth as part of their health care experience, with 26% having used it within three months of taking the survey.
• Cost is the top barrier to adoption and reason participants stopped using digital health technologies.

The report showed that healthcare providers believe additional clinical evidence (63%) and increased patient reimbursement (57%) will encourage further adoption of health technology. It made some recommendations, including increasing education of both consumers and providers on the technology available and how it can be used.

One area for growth may be enabling more of these tools through a central mobile application. One health system that Gozio works with has shared their plans to do more remote patient monitoring and other hospital at home services. They are interested in finding a way to make those tools available through their app. This is in part because they see personalization as a key to the future of digital health. As awareness and use grows for digital health technologies, this may be one way to increase adoption.

One thing we already know is that more tools and apps all standing alone is never a very effective way to raise adoption. You achieve an adoption tipping point when you can drive many people to one location for a lot of tools and features. A patient may come for one thing like urgent care wait times but come back to schedule a primary care visit or use telehealth or navigation. Thinking about these standalone digital health tools in the same way, could help increase value and usage.

The original version of this page was published at:  https://www.goziohealth.com/blog/what-does-the-future-digital-health-ecosystem-look-like