The Promise of Digital Health

Digital health promises to revolutionize healthcare with innovations such as remote monitoring, artificial intelligence, and automation. McKinsey Global Institute estimates that digital health could save up to $3 trillion annually by 2030. To capture this value, healthcare solutions must be patient-centric, stakeholder-aligned, and market-ready. That's where Digital Health Specialists come in.

Who are Digital Health Specialists?

A Digital Health Specialist is a hybrid professional who combines medical education and experience with cross-training and expertise in technology, systems, service design, and business growth. They have an intimate understanding of the healthcare landscape and an empathetic lens for all actors, especially patients. They guide the design and communication of the value of products - be they services, systems, or technology - created for patients, healthcare providers, and payors.

Transforming Healthcare: A Complex Journey

This is not an overnight transformation but a gruelling journey that equips these professionals to switch hats between physician, patient, and business person while considering the reimbursement, ethicolegal, and fiduciary implications of real-time exposure to patient health parameters. They can spot the flaws in your strategy that you might need to catch despite extensive experimentation and research.

Real-world Applications of Digital Health Specialists

Let me give you an example. I worked with a digital health startup that had developed a solution to collect and analyze passive and active patient-generated data from individuals with chronic metabolic diseases. Then, trend and display them near-real-time on a clinician-facing dashboard. The product was technically sound but needed to gain traction among its key end-users, particularly physicians. Why? Because physicians had no incentive to invest in such a solution. It did not fit into their current paradigm of care or reimbursement model.

As a Digital Health Specialist, spotting the flaw in their strategy was instinctive; I helped them repurpose their tool during scheduled medical visits and refocus their enhancements to reposition the application as a patient intake and ambulatory care decision support tool. This strategic shift aligned the product with the existing workflow and physicians' incentives, leading to a sharp uptick in sales, adoption, and customer satisfaction.

The Role of Digital Health Specialists in Today’s Healthcare Ecosystem

The role of a Digital Health Specialist is crucial in this context. They bring their medical expertise and firsthand healthcare experience to the table, ensuring that digital health solutions do not merely focus on technological advancements but consider the entire patient journey—from prevention and screening to diagnosis, treatment, and condition management.

Cost vs. Benefit: The Value of a Digital Health Specialist

Some might argue that being a clinician is not a pre-requisite, and the cost may outweigh the benefits. Consider this: What's the cost of a solution that doesn't meet market needs or resonate with its intended users? Further, an increasing number of clinicians are shifting to industry, excited to innovate and solve problems with a flair for different disciplines, from product development to marketing and sales. The long-term benefits and cost savings of having a digital health specialist on board exponentially outweigh the investment.

Patient-Centered Healthcare and the Digital Health Specialist

A Digital Health Specialist ensures that the Medtech revolution is truly patient-centred while addressing various stakeholders' pain points and needs, empowering patients with more control over their health journey. For example, the next-generation pacemakers enable physicians to monitor patients remotely and empower patients with smartphone access to critical information about their health.

Staying Ahead in the Digital Health Landscape

The digital health landscape is evolving rapidly, and you need a Digital Health Specialist on your team to ensure that your healthcare solutions are technologically sound, user-friendly, clinically relevant, timely and commercially viable.