Digital Health Trend Update—Digital Health Snake Oil?, Pharma’s Big Digital Health Moment, Blockchain Frenzy and More
By Fard Johnmar, Founder, Enspektos, and Advisory Board Member, Society for New Communications Research of The Conference Board
Welcome to the inaugural installment of the Digital Health Trend Update. Developed by digital health futurist, strategist and researcher, Fard Johnmar, this bi-weekly series provides you with an informative (and fun) overview of must-read insights, research and market events in the world of digital health.
What is digital health?
Given that many readers may be unfamiliar with the term digital health, it makes sense to define it briefly. I describe digital health as the use of multiple technologies (software, analytics, genomics, devices, etc.) to track, improve, support and modify health. The world of digital health has greatly expanded over the last five years and is already a multi-billion global market.
To learn more about the basics of digital health, resources you can use to learn more about this market and more, please see my Digital Health Innovator’s Mini-Handbook available here.
Digital health snake oil?
We have access to a technology that automatically tracks global sentiment about digital health: positive, negative or neutral. Over the weekend of June 11 and 12, 2016, we noticed a significant uptick in negative digital health commentary.
Why? Maybe it had something to do with a speech by the CEO of the American Medical Association calling digital health “snake oil.” Over the subsequent days, his comment generated significant attention and conversation. Despite the controversy, there’s a major fact that many in digital health can’t ignore: clinical evidence for many tools and technologies is lacking. Things are getting better, but it will take much time to prove that digital tools have a significant impact on health and well-being.
Pharma’s getting very serious about digital health
We also track how certain industry sub-sectors, such as payers and drug firms, are engaging in digital health. During Q2 2016, we noticed something interesting: a significant uptick in social conversation volume related to the pharmaceutical industry’s activities in digital health (see chart below).
Source: Enspektos, 2016
This is surprising because pharma is generally considered to be a laggard in the digital innovation arena. What this data suggests is that drug firms are taking digital health very seriously and are ramping up their activities in this space. If you are with a pharmaceutical company and you aren’t heavily focusing on building capabilities in digital health, you risk being left behind your peers.
Many health organizations are not excelling at digital health innovation
As reported previously on the Society for New Communications Research of The Conference Board’s (SNCR) blog, just because organizations are engaging in digital health innovation does not mean they are doing it well.
According to a global research study I produced, only 5 percent of health organizations are operating at the highest level of digital health innovation proficiency and expertise. You can learn more about this research by clicking here.
Blockchain … frenzy?
From a fantastic essay in HIStalk:
“Definitions of blockchain abound, and, depending on the resource, can be either fairly easy to understand or almost too abstract to contemplate. Techopedia defines it as “a critical part of the bitcoin peer-to-peer payment system.” Investopedia goes a bit further, defining it as a “public ledger of all bitcoin transactions that have ever been executed. It is constantly growing as ‘completed’ blocks are added to it with a new set of recordings. The blocks are added to the blockchain in a linear, chronological order.” These summaries are, in fact, too narrow, given that a blockchain does not in fact have to be tied to bitcoin.
Why should you care, you ask? According to our tracking data, global focus on blockchain is up by 97 percent over Q1 2016. Something’s going on. It’s time to pay attention.
I’ll be back in about two weeks with another installment of Digital Health Trend Update. Comments, or questions? Leave a reply below.
About Trends Highlighted in This Update
Digital health trends featured in this update were surfaced via Enspektos’ (Fard’s innovation consultancy) DigiHealth Informer intelligence and analytics platform. It is designed to counter digital health information overload by helping executives and others learn about and receive customized insights about the evolving digital health landscape in 15 minutes or less a day. Learn more about the platform by clicking here.