Digital Health and the Pandemic
The global pandemic has caused employers to change their digital health strategies, but that’s nothing compared to the change that’s coming. Tom Lee, founder and CEO of Galileo, a virtual care platform, views digital health in three distinct eras: BC, DC and AC – Before, During, and After COVID. Here’s how he described them at HLTH VRTL 2020:
- BC. Most healthcare innovation was a result of advances in consumer technology. The two catalyzing events that opened the door for digital health were the advent of smart phones, which allowed people to access care anywhere, and the Affordable Care Act, which pointed the market toward value, consumerism, and alternate payment models.
- DC. COVID has changed how we think about healthcare, and for many consumers it has shifted the paradigm for what care can be received where. While the past 10 years primed us for digital health, COVID pushed it center stage, forcing us all to reexamine norms and change patterns of behavior. In a period characterized by “fear and froth,” don’t fall victim to knee-jerk solutions -- work with vendors that have established track records.
- AC. This will be the era of David vs Goliath. Tom predicts we will see the tech giants (Walmart, Apple, Amazon, Google, etc) take bigger strides into healthcare. The Goliaths will reshape the landscape, but opportunity still exists for smaller, more nimble organizations.
Milt Ezzard of Activision Blizzard, a gaming and entertainment company, and Eddie Hightower of Caliber Collision, an auto collision repair company, provided their perspective on Tom’s comments. They agreed that COVID has been a catalyst even for employers that were early to adopt digital health offerings. Telemedicine and other virtual health services that may have languished for years with low utilization are now in demand, and employers may find they need a fresh approach to support employees who are more decentralized than ever before. Fortunately, digital health services yield an incredible amount of data that can be mined to refine and strengthen programmatic offerings, helping employers make smarter decisions about what to offer and who to offer it to. Many people are passive consumers of health, but employers see the opportunity for digital health – fueled by the pandemic -- to disrupt that trend. Digital health services, with their consumer-grade experiences, may better engage and activate consumers to find unrealized value from their benefit plans.
It can be hard to plan in the midst of a crisis. But as you’re making decisions for the DC era, it’s important to keep the AC era in view. Fingers crossed, it will be here soon.
The second annual HLTH conference on innovation in healthcare took place in October, and Mercer again sponsored a series of sessions for employers. We encourage you to explore these 30-minute sessions. They begin with a short introduction from an industry CEO, followed by an interactive discussion between two to three employers.