The Journal of mHealth Vol 2 issue 5 (Oct) | Page 37

Is Your Digital Health Strategy Thriving, Surviving or Non-Existent?

Is Your Digital Health
Strategy Thriving,
Surviving or Non-Existent?
More people than ever before are using technology to monitor
and track their own health or the health of a loved one. According to Parks Associates, the fitness tracker market is set to nearly
triple, reaching $5.4 billion by 2019. These digital health devices
are becoming a part of our socio-cultural fabric; mobile fitness
trackers and connected clinical devices will be as common an
accessory as a smartphone in the next five years.
This quick and significant growth represents enormous potential
for healthcare providers as they explore new ways to extend their
reach and connect to their patient populations. Care is moving
beyond the four walls of the hospital or physician’s office, and
provider organizations are beginning to invest in the infrastructure and programs to help launch data-driven initiatives.
These new, remote sources of patient health data provide valuable information to caregivers−whether it is a physician, nurse,
clinician, or lab technician−that can be used in the treatment of
a patient. With technology, healthcare providers are now able to
monitor existing conditions, diagnose earlier and with more accuracy, and provide better preventative care.
In order to incorporate information from all of these new
sources, providers need to establish a clear digital health strategy that incorporates telehealth and virtual visit services, remote
patient monitoring, and analytics. All of these initiatives are critical to the future success of a healthcare organization. And, key
to the success of those initiatives is patient-generated data.
The Landscape: Where Is Digital Health Today?
Most providers have yet to implement or successfully launch a
digital health strategy. In the summer of 2015, Validic,