The Top Trends in the Digital Health Market

Digital health tech has become one of the hottest global trends over the last year. Following the COVID-19 Pandemic, patients and providers rushed to switch to digital as much as possible. This digitalization coupled with a general focus on wellness and health, has led to an explosion in digital health tech companies and investment in health tech in general. 

But what are the top trends in digital health tech right now? 

Digital Pharmacies 

Digital pharmacies and the underlying technology necessary to make them run, are a huge trend as people look to get prescriptions online and not at the counter. Technically, there is a lot of work behind the scenes necessary to make this work. Software must connect to patients' medical records, doctor’s offices, health insurance companies and pharmacies. This level of complexity has been mastered by companies like Truepill who raised $75 million in series C funding last autumn to expand their offer further.   

Precision Medicine 

The goal of precision medicine is to tailor medical treatments based on segmenting the patient population, so that we are all not getting ‘cookie-cutter’ health care. This is one step before fully personalized medicine which would offer completely unique treatments tailored to individual patients. Precision medicine offers better patient outcomes and treatments driven by technology. Tempus is one of the leading companies in this space and recently raised $200 Million to expand the offer of their AI-Powered precision medicine tool. 

Digital Health Experience Platforms 

Digital experiences are being used across businesses in everything from training and onboarding to work to change employee perceptions and behaviour. Digital experiences are powerful because they can change our perceptions and the way we see things. It’s no wonder then, that this power is being harnessed in healthcare. Goldman Sachs recently commissioned a report which shows that digital health experiences could save $300 billion in healthcare costs  

Genomics 

Genomics are actually a branch of scientific research looking at gene therapies and building treatments based on individual genomes. Genomics could truly be a gamechanger in how we treat disease. Genomic Health (part of Exact Sciences) is one of the most exciting companies in this space, commercialising treatments based on genomics and targeting cancer treatment.   

Partnerships between Health Tech Companies and External Development Partners 

Up to this point, we’ve looked at specific types of digital health tech but now let’s take a step back and look at a large overarching trend in the digital health space. The interest in digital health tech from investors has led to a boom in the space but it has also left companies struggling to hire enough developers to meet the new aggressive growth goals. The shortage of developers coupled with the need for ‘surge capacity’ in development teams has led to the growth in externalising development to trusted partners with expert development teams who are trained in all the relevant compliance rules. While this trend is new in health tech, it’s been going on in other highly regulated industries like Banking for the last 15 years or so. To learn more, download the guide: How and When to Externalise: Digital Health Tech in 2022. 

In conclusion, digital health tech is one of the fastest growing and exciting spaces in tech today. The new solutions coming on the market could complete change medicine over the next decade and could help us all to live happier, fuller and healthier lives.