7 Organization Types Looking to Benefit from the Digital Health Revolution

Digital health is the convergence of digital and genomic technologies with health, healthcare, living, and society to enhance the efficiency of healthcare delivery and make medicines more personalized and precise. The discipline involves the use of information and communication technologies to help address the health problems and challenges faced by patients, as well as the general public who wants to stay healthy.

7 Organization Types Looking to Benefit from the Digital Health Revolution

Many different organizations are interested to take part in the digital health revolution:

1. IT giants such as Google, Apple, Microsoft, Samsung and Facebook are already on board, offering a number of apps, services and platforms. Apple has a trio of platforms (HealthKit, ResearchKit and CareKit), Google has a dedicated company exploring novel health technologies (Verily), Microsoft and Samsung also have their platforms (Microsoft HealthVault and Samsung Health, respectively), while Facebook keeps adding new features to its products to help users improve their wellbeing.

2. Big pharma is also on board, with many of the biggest companies launching apps and games to improve adherence, promote their drugs use, and even conduct trials  —  most notably, using Apple's ResearchKit platform. Also, some of them are testing so called "digital pharmaceuticals" which are apps that can/must be prescribed by a physician.

3. Traditional health IT companies like Epic, McKesson, Philips, Allscripts and others  —  which provide solutions for health records, population health and care coordination  —  are looking to add mobile technology to their respective offerings, while also making their systems sing along those of competing vendors to achieve interoperability.

4. Hospitals and health systems are looking to embrace digital health solutions both to increase productivity and cut costs, as they transition from fee-for-service to value-based reimbursements.

5. Universities and research institutions are on board to help the industry, commercialize their own technologies and test some of the new systems.

6. Startups are also trying to innovate in the field, bringing along new ways of thinking to the market. Silicon Valley is not the only one competing for the "digital health dollars"  —  there are also big startup communities in the New York City area, Los Angeles, Chicago and other major cities. Moreover, we have foreign companies making headways in the space.

7. Finally, there are Venture Capital firms, which keep up with what startups are doing. In addition to "regular" VCs, in the digital health space we have a few corporate VCs that are very active in the space  —  most notably investment divisions of Google, GE and Qualcomm.

Emerging ecosystem...

The ecosystem is emerging and you should get involved in it. You can go and research for yourself relying on Google and dedicated publications, or take a shortcut and learn from a site that is purposely built to bring more users to the "digital health revolution."

DHbriefs is there to help. It stands for "Digital Health Briefs," offering research briefs that cover specific digital health market niches. These briefs (will) provide industry intelligence, outlook of key players, their products and services, and more  —  making sure YOU get to save time and money, while potentially opening new opportunities for growth.

Whether you're a medical or pharma professional, student or an engineer, someone looking to enhance or change his/her career  —  you don't want to miss out on the digital health revolution.