Business-to-consumer in the digital health world seems to have peaked and, unless something dramatic changes, that could well be permanent.
Silicon Valley Bank's Steve Allan, head of analytics, presented at a HealthXL board meeting I recently attended. Silicon Valley Bank does a great job of researching and publishing on healthcare investing trends so check out the bank's site for this.
The topic was the state of consumer-focused digital health; in other words, stuff where the end-user or person whose wallet comes out is the consumer/patient/human. It's a little murky, as SVB includes a number of things in the consumer category that I personally would categorize in a more professional clinical domain (e.g., digital therapeutics and disease/medication management). But frankly the whole digital health thing is getting pretty murky; it's hard to tell where medtech, pharma, health services and health IT start and end with respect to each other anymore.
Convergence is everywhere and the short-hand is “digital health.” Unfortunately, it's become an outdated term in its short life. RIP digital health, long live tech-enabled healthcare in its many forms.
