5 Insights on the Emerging Market for Social Innovation Technology in Health

Takeaways from the 2018 Buyer’s Guide Report

We just launched a new market research report to assess the opportunity to address the social determinants of health. After six months of research with technology vendors, industry consultants, current and former public health officials, and leaders from hospitals, health plans, and non-profits, here are some of our top takeaways:

1. As a market, Social Innovation is far more unstructured than traditional health IT and digital health, due to the high variability in Medicaid programs, grant/foundation funding, and health system leadership across states, counties, and cities. Moreover, the lack of industry standards around product features like social screening, data integration, and reporting have also complicated dynamics of ‘product-market fit.’
2. Perhaps the biggest challenge in the evolution of social innovation in healthcare is the question of how to approach measurement, risk adjustment, and payment. In communities across the country, it remains mostly unclear what performance, payment, and accountability look like for non-clinical care. The unifying thread across these issues is data; today’s investments in new tech serves as a foundational effort in understanding how to better capture…