Digital Health, Health 2.0, or Health Tech? Does it matter?

Over the past few years, an increasing focus is placed in the area of healthcare, as a field ripe for innovation. A number of reasons are behind this growing interest, including:

• Increasing costs to the healthcare system (public but also private) are placing an unsustainable burden on governments and companies
• Personal health costs, as applicable (e.g. over the counter medications, diagnostics, supportive treatments) are growing out of proportion
• A rapidly aging population on a global scale
• Large number of diseases with increasing incidence rate
• Conditions which, thanks to scientific and overall progress, become long-term or chronic, affecting millions of people indefinitely
• Exponentially growing impact of disease and absenteeism to productivity
• Co-morbidities and polypharmacy imposing their severe and combined burden on quality of life
• Escalating costs of pre-clinical and clinical research for new medications, with decreasing success rates.

While the above are placing the world’s collective health on a negative spiral, there are plenty of positive developments that cannot be ignored, like:

• The ever-growing sophistication of processes required across all parts of healthcare
• The unprecedented rate of increase in health-related data being produced (by individuals but not only)
• Advances in the fields of genomics and genetics, that augment the scope of their impact but also increase the unknowns
• Democratization of innovation, whereby enhancements can be implemented rapidly, with shrinking costs
• The emergence (or second coming?) of technologies and capabilities orthogonal to healthcare, like artificial intelligence, virtual and augmented reality, big data, blockchain, and more
• Constant evolution of business models, in a previously monolithic and rigid ecosystem of payers, providers and citizens.

Clearly, technology has a central role to play in how we strive to lead a healthy life, prevent, diagnose and treat disease, as well as how the healthcare stakeholders collaborate, compete, make money and save costs. And the driving force behind these technological changes includes the multitude of current and future startups striving to make a difference.

What’s in a name?

As more people focus on healthcare innovation, the space itself expands and begins to adopt many different names.

“e-Health” was probably one the first such names given to the intersection of health and technology. Soon enough, the realization that most of the healthcare touchpoints (but not the essence of health yet) are technologically driven or enabled, led to the gradual abolition of this name.

“m-Health” emerged as the nearest hint to the ever-present role mobile phones and devices are playing in our lives. As a term, its significance was watered down given the prevalence of these technologies: since anything mobile was getting connected, why distinguish them?

“Health 2.0” is perhaps the most natural parallel drawn with the rest of the technology world: after all, the Web 2.0 concept grew so much that it evolved to encompass anything connected to “the internet”.

“Digital Health” is a clear indication of the inevitable: even health, the last frontier of old paradigms (including paper forms, lack of interoperability, and data silos), is slowly but surely giving in to the digital ways and infrastructure.

“Health Tech” aims to adopt the naming convention of so many other technologies (like FinTech, PropTech, AgriTech, and more). Its initial scope of describing the technology itself has been enlarged to include the new health paradigms that emerge.

“Med Tech” often describes medical devices and/or wearables, which may be used throughout the path of care but also beyond it. Given the growing scope of “medical devices” (which, sometimes, are not actual devices).

Healthcare system geography

Technology unites the world: someone in a remote island in Greece may be able to use the same fundamental technologies with a teenager in a village in central Africa and a senior citizen in Helsinki. In a disturbing reversal, this is not the same in health: access to healthcare services and medications, regulatory frameworks, pricing models, and more… these are wildly unstructured and fragmented.

This is why many health startups are focusing on specific regions or countries — often accepting the fact that their growth beyond these borders may require a completely new approach.

At the same time, this is one of the reason that the application of technology to healthcare can be so exciting: the dynamics of our daily interaction are such that require a strictly multi-dimensional approach: no single size fits all, and no approach is panacea.

If someone cannot recognize this in the healthcare field, they are in for a surprise.

Technology as an enabler

How many times have you heard the word “disruption” lately? Doesn’t it make you feel liberated, with enormous potential and unlimited applications?

Now…how would you feel if you were told that your health is about to be disrupted?

It is absolutely critical for health entrepreneurs to recognize the value and role of technology, in the context of the citizens, patients, caregivers, healthcare professionals, healthcare providers and organizations, private and public insurance payers, etc.

At the same time, it is important to acknowledge that the introduction of technology should not be done for technology’s sake. On the contrary, there are still a few young companies which suffer from the fallacy of “solutions looking for problems”.

The current status: change is everywhere. Be a part of it!

There is growing interest in applying high-tech to healthcare. Even the most “traditional” players (for example, insurance companies, hospitals and care homes, to name only a few) are beginning to see the important gaps and opportunities.

2018 midyear global funding report from Startup Health and RockHealth

The 2017 M&A report in Digital Health (MobiHealthNews)

The largest acquisition to date: Roche buys Flatiron valued at $2.1B

Digital Therapeutics: McKinsey’s view

Eager to make a difference in healthcare?

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If you are you working on the intersection of technology and health, we want to hear from you! Email us with some information about what drives you to make a difference, and your slidedeck, and we will get back to you soon!