It's no secret that health systems are feeling strained, with 47% of physicians experiencing symptoms of clinician burnout.¹ An overwhelming amount of clinical data, jam-packed days with little time to connect with patients, and a lengthy list of responsibilities are leaving healthcare professionals feeling drained.

Clinician exhaustion can lead to reduced job satisfaction, increased turnover, and a decrease in the quality of care provided to patients. But burnout isn’t only harmful to teams — it can also cause financial strain on health systems. According to a study by the Annals of Internal Medicine, clinician exhaustion accumulates approximately $4.6 billion in costs due to turnover and reduced clinic hours.²

But when health systems use digital tools the right way, they can reduce the risk of clinician burnout and increase patient care coordination.

More than 90,000 new digital health solutions entered the market in 2020,¹ and annual growth is expected to increase 27% over the next 8 years.² For health systems, this creates an unprecedented opportunity to leverage digital solutions, especially considering: expanded reimbursement opportunities for remote monitoring, soaring patient engagement, and increased physician demand.

With so many digital options available, comprehensive partner evaluations are critical for identifying solutions with staying power, ensuring successful implementation, and developing the necessary infrastructure to support integration at scale. If health systems aren’t asking the right questions during their value assessments, they won’t see a return on their investments.

These are the top 5 questions health systems must consider before heading into their digital partner evaluations: 

Health systems are under pressure to capitalize on healthcare's growing digital landscape, especially with staffing shortages and clinician burnout at an all-time high. Without a concrete approach to integrating digital solutions into their care management strategies, health systems are at risk of losing time, physicians, patients, and money.

In our latest webinar, industry-leading experts from the Digital Therapeutics Alliance, ResMed, and Propeller Health shared insight on the changing status of the digital health market, and addressed how health systems can identify and adopt the digital solutions that have staying power. 

Here are some of the biggest takeaways from the discussion:

Propeller Health and its research partners presented five abstracts at this year’s European Respiratory Society (ERS) International Congress. Our latest research explored the relationship between respiratory comorbidities and healthcare utilization, the effect of digital health solutions on medication adherence and asthma control, and projected prevalence of COPD by the year 2050.

Read brief summaries of each abstract below or click the links to view them online.

Characterizing healthcare resource use among adults with COPD by presence of comorbidities

Between the rising global prevalence of chronic disease and a rapidly growing digital-first movement in healthcare, the development of connected drug delivery devices has increased significantly over the last several years. 

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the connected drug delivery devices market was experiencing steady growth. By the end of 2020, the market had grown 23.8% compared to the previous year.¹ This expansion indicates that more than ever, embedding electronics and sensors into drug delivery devices including inhalers and injector pens is becoming more widely adopted. 

Healthcare is at an inflection point. In the United States, value-based models continue to grow, with value-based contracts expected to account for 22% of insured lives by 2025 – up 7% from current figures.¹ At the same time, rising healthcare costs and changing government incentives are contributing to shifts in provider and payer demand.

So, what does all of this mean for pharmaceutical and life sciences companies? 

From the increased development of personalized therapeutics to the growing adoption of telemedicine, digital innovation has been applied to nearly every aspect of patient care and human health.

In a special publication with the National Academy of Medicine, Propeller Health and ResMed’s VP of Population Health Research, Meredith Barrett – alongside several luminaries in healthcare such as leaders from UCSF, Blue Shield of California, The Scripps Research Institute, and more – provides a comprehensive review of digital health solutions and identifies critical implementation opportunities including: 

In an evolving healthcare landscape, payers have the unique opportunity to reimagine how they deliver care services and keep their members engaged, especially those with chronic conditions such as asthma and COPD.

During the pandemic, when providers, payers and health plan members required alternative solutions to traditional in-person care, options for virtual care and digital health technologies became more widely accepted – and grew exponentially. Now, many industry experts anticipate this shift will last, particularly as healthcare consumer expectations continue to grow.¹

In our latest blog post hosted by HLTH, Propeller Health’s General Manager, Susa Monacelli, dives deep into what it really means to leverage digital health for value-based care and how those approaches can be applied toward achieving health equity.

Digital therapeutics for chronic conditions such as asthma and COPD have been proven to deliver clinical and financial outcomes. Platforms that combine medical devices, consumer apps, clinical data for provider monitoring, and patient engagement and coaching are effective in promoting better health outcomes. These outcomes, including improvements in medication adherence, ER visits and hospitalization, have been demonstrated in a variety of patient populations from pediatric to geriatric to those historically underserved. 

However, realizing these outcomes at scale, while ensuring health equity in access, affordability and health improvements requires a different approach. This entails precise, patient-centric interventions that must be personalized based on social and cultural determinants, demographics, learning and decision styles, disease stage and motivations. By shifting the focus toward using digital health to enable data-driven behavior change, providers and payers will not only be able to sustainably deliver on value-based care for patients, but also apply their learnings more broadly to promote health equity.