| Literature DB >> 32411829 |
Adam B Cohen1,2, E Ray Dorsey3, Simon C Mathews4,5, David W Bates6,7, Kyan Safavi8.
Abstract
The digital health industry has grown rapidly in the past decade. There will be few future aspects of healthcare untouched by digital health. Thus, the current status of the industry, the implications of companies' directions and clinical focus, and their external funding are increasingly relevant to healthcare policy, regulation, research, and all healthcare stakeholders. Yet, little is known about the degree to which the digital health industry has focused on the key domains in the health continuum, including prevention, detection, and management. We performed a cross-sectional study of a US digital health industry cohort that received publicly disclosed funding from 2011-2018. We assessed the number of companies; respective funding within each part of the health continuum; and products and services by technology type, clinical indication, purchasers, and end users. In this emerging industry, most companies focused on management of disease and the minority on prevention or detection. This asymmetry, which is similar to the traditional healthcare system, represents an opportunity to focus on earlier parts of the health continuum. Patients were a common purchaser of all products, but especially prevention-focused digital health products, implying a large unmet need not yet served by the traditional healthcare system.Entities:
Keywords: Disease prevention; Therapeutics
Year: 2020 PMID: 32411829 PMCID: PMC7217869 DOI: 10.1038/s41746-020-0276-9
Source DB: PubMed Journal: NPJ Digit Med ISSN: 2398-6352
Fig. 1Company funding by year across the health continuum.
Total funding per year for each health continuum category for companies with a singular or mixed focus among the categories.
Digital health industry technology types across the health continuum.
Health continuum: the percentage of companies with each characteristic is shown for each part of the continuum. Since one company may have multiple characteristics within each category (technology type, clinical indication, end user, purchaser), rows and columns within each characteristics section add to >100%.
The shade of each cell corresponds to the combination’s frequency (i.e., a dark cell reflects a more frequent combination). All company characteristics, outside the continuum categories, were defined by Rock Health.
†Denotes leading combinations of a “specific” clinical indication or technology type. Here, specific refers to any technology type or clinical indication excluding “general,” “none,” “populations,” or “other”.
Digital health industry end users and purchasers across the health continuum.
Health continuum: the percentage of companies with each characteristic is shown for each part of the continuum. Since one company may have multiple characteristics within each category (technology type, clinical indication, end user, purchaser), rows and columns within each characteristics section add to >100%.
The shade of each cell corresponds to the combination’s frequency (i.e., a dark cell reflects a more frequent combination). All company characteristics, outside the continuum categories, were defined by Rock Health.
Top clinical indication/technology type pairings across health continuum.
The shade of each cell corresponds to the combination’s frequency (i.e., a dark cell reflects a more frequent combination). All company characteristics, outside the continuum categories, were defined by Rock Health.
*Only for the “populations” and “women’s health” clinical indications were there ties for top pairings; both sets of ties are shown in the table.
Continuum of health category assignments based on company objectives.
| Continuum categories | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prevention | Detection | Management | |||
| Treatment | Monitoring | Coordination | |||
| Objectives | |||||
| Fitness and wellness | ✓ | ||||
| Prevention of disease | ✓ | ||||
| Diagnosis of disease | ✓ | ||||
| Treatment of disease | ✓ | ||||
| Clinical decision support and precision medicine | ✓ | ||||
| On-demand healthcare services | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||
| Population health management | ✓ | ✓ | |||
| Monitoring of disease | ✓ | ||||
| Care coordination | ✓ | ||||
| Patient adherence | ✓ | ||||
Company objectives were defined by Rock Health.
Digital health industry clinical indications across the health continuum.
| Prevention | Detection | Treatment | Monitoring | Coordination | All | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 167 | 91 | 266 | 284 | 295 | 702 | ||
| Clinical indication | None | 62.9% | 18.7% | 33.1% | 39.8% | 54.2% | 46.2% |
| Populations | 8.4% | 12.1% | 17.7% | 18.7% | 24.1% | 15.4% | |
| Other | 5.4% | 24.2% | 19.2% | 12.3% | 8.8% | 11.7% | |
| Neurologic | 10.8% | 14.3% | 7.5% | 3.2% | 1.4% | 7.1% | |
| Mental health | 6.6% | 3.3% | 11.7% | 8.8% | 6.4% | 7.0% | |
| Endocrine | 5.4% | 6.6% | 6.0% | 9.5% | 4.7% | 6.0% | |
| Cardiovascular | 2.4% | 15.4% | 3.4% | 9.9% | 1.4% | 5.8% | |
| Oncologic | 0.0% | 14.3% | 7.1% | 0.7% | 1.4% | 4.3% | |
| Women’s health | 3.0% | 7.7% | 4.9% | 3.9% | 2.0% | 4.1% | |
| Pulmonary | 0.0% | 1.1% | 0.8% | 2.8% | 1.0% | 1.4% |
Health continuum: the percentage of companies with each characteristic is shown for each part of the continuum. Since one company may have multiple characteristics within each category (technology type, clinical indication, end user, purchaser), rows and columns within each characteristics section add to >100%.
†Denotes leading combinations of a “specific” Technology Type. Here, specific refers to any Technology Type excluding “general software,” or “other”.