AI and Big Tech Are Leading the Charge in Digital Health Market in 2024
R2G’s annual global Digital Health Business Outlook survey reveals that Artificial Intelligence (AI), Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) and Digital Health Ecosystems are the three key topics of the market in 2024. Big Tech companies are also seen as the leading driver of the digital health industry.
As we step into 2024, the digital health landscape is defined by the convergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM), and Digital Health Ecosystems, according to the participants in R2G’s latest global Digital Health Business Outlook Survey (n=831).
Increasing steadily from 57% in 2022, 88% of the digital health business decision-makers in the 2024 survey believe that AI will be the key trending topic of the year, with its amplified impact spanning across diagnostics, personalization, discovery, and predictive analytics in healthcare.
RPM solutions and services also jumped to 2nd spot this year in the key trending topics of the digital health market. The promises of these solutions in efficiently decreasing the hospital visits and creating outpatient care pathways for the traditional healthcare providers seem to resonate with 33% of the survey participants.
Even though its downward trend, digital health ecosystems are trending topic at the 3rd position in 2024, selected by 27% of the digital health market decision-makers. Furthermore, the strike of RPM onto the 2nd spot kicked DTx (25%) out of the top three trending digital health topics this year.
Reimbursements lost its foothold among the key topics of the digital health market, with a decrease from 25% last year to 9% this year. The reasons behind Pear Therapeutics’ bankruptcy, business model changes in Akili Interactive Labs, and the changing rules and policies in different countries have certainly contributed to the diminishing popularity of reimbursements.
Also answering the question of who is going to be on the driver’s seat of the digital health market in 2024, 48% of the participants pointed out Big Tech companies. Steadily increasing since 2022, the influence of the Big Tech companies surpassed the expectations from the digital health startups selected by 46% in this year’s survey.
The strength of Big Tech companies in building AI solutions seem to have an impact on their perceived leading force in the digital health industry in 2024.
Last year for instance, Microsoft invested $10 billion USD into OpenAI, the company behind the popular AI chatbot ChatGPT.
Additionally, Google introduced its MedLM, powered by its medical large language model Med PaLM 2, developed to answer medical questions, and generate insights from unstructured health data.
Amazon also evolved from a cloud service provider into becoming a hybrid healthcare provider with its $3.9 billion USD acquisition of One Medical. They launched Amazon Health Services nationwide in the U.S. and started to build a digital health ecosystem to provide chronic care services from third party providers like Omada Health.
With an increasing perceived power since 2022, Pharma companies are also in the top three drivers of digital health industry in 2024, according to 38% of the respondents.
While Medtech companies (30%) and payers/insurers (29%) are standing still in their positions in 2024 compared to 2023, the new actors in 2024 are the pharmacies (14%) and retailers (10%), as a driving force of the digital health market.
Clearly, 2024 is expected to be a pivotal year for AI solutions and Big Tech companies, as indicated by the survey participants. The momentum is building, especially for RPM solutions, poised to make a significant impact on the digital health landscape. With AI at the forefront and Big Tech driving the industry, the year is anticipated to unfold a transformation in digital health.
The whitepaper describing the results from “Global Digital Health Business Outlook Survey – 2024” can be downloaded in here.
R2G has been constantly monitoring the global digital health industry since 2010. We provide strategic advice for how to build and grow a successful digital health business within all therapeutic areas, business models and regions. We are happy to talk and share our experience! For more information reach out to [email protected]
