Health care needs a digital transformation. Is it ready?

Health care is behind nearly all other industries on digital transformation. Covid-19 created an opening for change—purchaser demand for digital care skyrocketed and the unsustainability of the industry’s digital-averse business models were exposed. Venture investment dollars have flowed freely ever since. Innovators are capitalizing by advancing technologies that could help enable more scalable, proactive, and holistic care. In doing so, they could reshape how we approach existing and emerging challenges to health care’s business models, including health equity, senior care, and value-based care.

In other words, the ambition is large, and the stakes are high. Meanwhile, the barriers are many. The vast majority of organizations’ incentives run counter to the goals of the most innovative industry players. Industry leaders looking to make health care more digitally enabled will be poorly served by focusing narrowly on their own patients or piece of the care journey. Making health care truly digitally enabled will require changing the incentives that underlie industry dynamics altogether.