Photo Credit: Jay Davison/Getty Images
COVID-19 continues to fundamentally change the way patients receive healthcare services in America.
The pandemic has been an immense tragedy in human terms. However, it has led to a surge in digital health investment and an opportunity to create a future that will most certainly include unprecedented access to digital health applications that will dramatically improve lives.
Telehealth, in particular, saw major growth during the pandemic and continues to trend in 2021 as more people engage in services. (Disclosure: The author is an employee of J.P. Morgan.)
In fact, the entire digital health industry raised a record-breaking $6.7 billion so far in the first half of 2021 alone. Within this sector, virtual mental health care grew significantly, outpacing primary care for virtual visits, while investments continue to be made within digital therapeutics.
With the rush of consumers turning to online healthcare platforms, it’s little surprise to see patient-facing digital health companies doing brisk business, joining forces, breaking fundraising records, going public and bringing the word "boom" back to the front pages of business publications.
These applications have staggering potential, but only if they are supported by a rigorous commitment to a secure, reliable and integrated infrastructure that supports the front-end consumer-facing applications that hold such promise.
Just as your smartphone apps for travel and finance are useless without the network that supports them, delivering a quality digital health experience requires a commitment to infrastructure investment and data integration.
But to build a future that supports truly transformative digital health, investors and company founders must understand that the infrastructure behind digital health applications is in many ways as important, or more important, than the front-end patient-facing apps that attract so much attention and investment.
In my view, there are three components of infrastructure that to one degree or another will continue to shape the future of digital health:
Patient data unlocked
For years, healthcare data sat in silos unable to be shared. The CMS interoperability mandate that is being implemented in July is helping to address this issue. However, we still have a long way to go when it comes to making health information available to the patients who are the legal owners of it.
Flooding people with information that is incomplete, incomprehensible, or both, cannot be counted as a win. My mother-in-law, for example, can access much of her health history via her electronic medical record. But trying to interpret what she finds there – numeric scores on diagnostic tests, technical language, billing codes and other data – is another story. She and millions of others still need a physician to make the results comprehensible.
When data is used properly it is accurate and easy to understand. A physician will know relevant facts about your health before you mention them. When patients and physicians are able to easily access health data, and have tools that enable them to understand the data, the course of delivery of care will be improved. We will know big data is working when providers know all the relevant facts about a patient’s health before the patient says a word.
Digitization and broadband for better access to the best care
The work by standards organizations, medical societies and providers to digitize clinical practice guidelines and speed the dissemination of them via the cloud will be key to democratizing access to the findings and practices by the world’s top doctors and academic medical centers.
Rural and other underserved areas, formerly isolated, will be able to access the medical expertise and personnel at top institutions. Diagnosis and treatments, as well as the clinicians behind them, will be available to doctors practicing in remote community hospitals and clinics, and to their patients, with the click of a mouse.
Analytics and AI for better patient outcomes
Beyond access, analytics and AI also have the potential to save lives. But how do we separate promising technologies from the AI hype machine?
I look for AI programs that can offer specific, incremental improvements in care. Why? Because better care is what patients need. Patients aren’t looking for the next AI “moonshot,” and neither am I.
For example, analytics can help tailor doses of important medicines like chemotherapy more closely to individual patients, or track the treatment response to medications among large populations of patients. The resulting information can then be used in precision medicine.
Why do a large number of people in a certain geographic area suffer from diabetes? AI can find commonalities, the kind that improve care and patient outcomes.
Look beyond the app to transform care
To build the truly transformative digital health experience that patients expect and deserve, digital health executives and investors must have the foresight and discipline to look beyond the app. We must continue to ask the hard questions about the access to data, the infrastructure behind the curtain and the analytics to improve healthcare.
As COVID-19 has demonstrated, patients are eager to embrace the value of digital health. It has the potential to offer breakthrough patient service and convenience – bringing care to rural and underserved populations, keeping patients in closer touch with their doctors, helping them stay on schedule with their medications, and providing a better understanding of their own health risks and histories.
The promise of digital health is here for the taking. But real transformation will only be achieved with a laser focus on building a robust, integrated infrastructure that will bring the benefits of digital health to life for millions of patients who want it and who need it.
About the author:
Pamela Aldsworth is Head of venture capital relationships for J.P. Morgan’s middle market banking and Specialized Industries business. In her role, she leads a national team of venture experts, and drives the strategy to provide expertise and access to the VC community and its portfolio companies, thus helping to build a supportive ecosystem around the innovation economy.
