By Jamie Burgess
Early this year at the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference, our interviews with thought leaders in the digital health space (including BrightInsight CEO and co-founder Kal Patel) in the 2023 BrightInsight Digital Health C-Suite Series revealed a few key trends to watch in 2023. Now as we get closer to wrapping 2023, I took a look back at those conversations.
Not surprisingly, these opinion leaders identified some key issues that came to dominate the space. For example, Kal Patel flagged an underlying theme that’s driven headlines all year.
“I think 2023 is going to really separate the companies that have been making claims about what they can do from those that can prove it,” he told us. “This is a year in which you start translating from dollars put in, to ROI. You’ve got to start showing products that are getting launched. What kind of adoption are they getting? What kind of clinical benefit are they delivering for the patient? And then, ultimately, how are they driving incremental financial results for your business?”
That prediction bore out, as a period of pandemic-driven investment wound down, and a string of digital health startups fizzled out.
The year began with a “new normal” investment climate involving “fewer deals, lower check sizes and a smaller cohort of sector investors,” according to a first-half 2023 review by researchers at Rock Health, and continued with a spate of casualties: the high-profile bankruptcy of digital therapeutics developer Pear Therapeutics; digital primary care provider Babylon Health; digital insurance provider Health IQ; and Akili’s decision to abandon its prescription digital therapeutic.
Justin Butler, partner, Eclipse Ventures notes, “This year the rubber's going to meet the road,” Butler told us, explaining that solutions addressing only one facet of the ecosystem — for example, patients, physicians, or pharma — have less chance of succeeding.
“The companies that are really going to come to the forefront this year will help all of them. Unless you really have something that touches each part of the ecosystem, you're not going to be able to rise above the rest of the players. Companies that can really understand that entire ecosystem and provide value across the board will be the ones that really win in ‘23.”
To that end, the BrightInsight Disease Management Solution aims to serve all biopharma and medtech stakeholders via a patient app, healthcare provider interfaces, and analytics dashboards. We are actively working on implementations of our Disease Management Solution to provide remote monitoring to providers, help patients administer, manage, and cope with the requirements for their therapies, and assist pharma customers with issues of conversion to ensure their products succeed in the market.
Additionally, our BrightInsight Ecosystem includes more than 20 of the world’s leading healthcare and technology companies revolutionizing patient care through digital. For example, the BrightInsight Disease Management Solution offers a generative AI “empathy engine” developed by Woebot Health, which uses its ability to learn to develop a lasting and sympathetic relationship with the patient. In another example, our partnership with ixlayer enables drug companion apps built leveraging our Disease Management Solution to incorporate ixlayer’s convenient at-home diagnostic testing.
In addition to proving value and delivering ROI across the ecosystem, success for digital health companies also means staying compliant in an ever-evolving (and increasing) regulatory landscape. As Elisabethann Wright, EU regulatory expert and Cooley partner discussed, changes in regulatory requirements across regions and domains, such as AI or diagnostics, are a constant in the digital health space. Companies that fail to keep abreast of this evolving landscape risk being on the receiving end of a warning letter from FDA, subject to fines in the US and EU or exposed to civil litigation.
The FDA is paying closer attention to the digital health space, establishing a new Digital Health Advisory Committee to help it navigate the scientific and technical issues associated with developing technologies such as artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML), augmented reality, virtual reality, digital therapeutics, wearables, remote patient monitoring, and software as a medical-device (SaMD).
Taken together, these forecasts highlight an overall trend: the digital health space is subject to increasing levels of rigor - from products needing to show true, measurable value to regulatory requirements – something that's likely to continue into the new year.
All of our interviews from the 2023 JPM Digital Health C-suite series can be found here.
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.
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BrightInsight provides the leading global platform for biopharma and medtech regulated digital health solutions. We are the launch partner companies trust to accelerate time to market for regulated digital health products including apps, algorithms, medical devices, connected combination products, companion diagnostics, and Software as a Medical Device.
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