Galen Growth + ViVE 2024 Champion Digital Health Innovation as a Salve for an Ailing US Health Ecosystem

UPDATED Story with the Galen Growth | 2024 Digital Health Report Issued at ViVE2024

Media colleague Eric Wicklund, associate content manager and senior editor for Innovation, Technology, and Pharma for HealthLeaders, has penned a ViVE preview piece with a power grabber: “CAN VIVE 2024 SOLVE HEALTHCARE’S BIGGEST DILEMMAS?” That headline question isn’t rhetorical and doesn’t require an answer.  Resolution is not the responsibility of the ViVE co-organizers CHIME Health and HLTH.  ViVE puts the collaborative opportunity for health ecosystem players to face the challenges and opportunities in motion.

At the heart of these dilemmas is how payers, patients, product innovators, policymakers, and providers source and maximize health information.  No doubt everyone is jumping on the AI, ChatGPT, and GenAI bandwagon, excited that technology will solve the problems of system-wide fragmentation.  But like any tech shift or bolus of information, it all comes down to what innovation theorist John Nosta calls the “Introduction of the Cognitive Age.”

While some express trepidation that this technological revolution is the dawn of all fears that smart machines will replace health professionals, Nosta suggests that the “Cognitive Age leverages AI as a partner, augmenting and enhancing people’s ability to access and act with heightened intellectual and even technical (i.e., physical ability).

Once again, ViVE has teamed up with Galen Growth to provide insights on digital health in the US health systems. Galen Growth connects the importance of partnership and recent trends influencing not only the US health system – but also the close reader how health information and innovative technologies will transform the delivery, quality, and cost of patient care – including the influence on clinical evidence, decentralized clinical trials, and connective and home care.

Access the Galen Growth 2024 Digital Health Report here: LINK

ViVE is the space where all these conversations – the good, bad, and ugly – of the (predominately US) health ecosystem can be explored, and ideas can be identified and pursued.  VIVE partners with Galen Growth – the global digital health research and analytics specialist. It uses its proprietary database HealthTech AlphaTM to track more than 680 million data points, documenting 14,200 digital health ventures worldwide to produce its “Digital Health Innovation | 2024 Report.”

“In an era of rapid technological advancement, the 6,129 hospitals within 407 Health Systems1 across the United States are at the forefront of transforming healthcare delivery for diverse communities nationwide, notes Julien de Salaberry, a co-founder and CEO of Galen Growth. As the Digital Health landscape evolves, Health Systems play a pivotal role in bridging gaps, enhancing patient outcomes, and addressing persistent pain points.”

But the most significant challenges to accessing the potential of these new digital health technologies are not in ideas themselves – rather the innovators’ understanding of how the US health system works (or is dysfunctional); too often, the founders of these companies are unaware of how to engage leading hospital systems – find champions, integrate within the system, and address cost benefits and ongoing support issues.  Failure to navigate the complexity of countless decision-makers too often leads to ventures running out of capital and vanishing.  The Galen Growth Digital Health Innovation Report documents the roadway to potential success.

CTOs and CIOs within significant health systems are not immune to unprecedented challenges facing hospital economics and the cost of technology. Digital health leaders also recognize that they will hit a brick wall without clearly expressing ROI.  Health systems require measurable outcomes and evidence-based results from digital health partners, and to succeed mutually, they are creating incubators, venture groups and partnership models.

Health systems – hospitals, long-term care communities, and home care providers – will make giant leaps very shortly, drawing on information and technological changes.  The Galen Growth Report issued at ViVE on Monday, February 25^th, is the analysis and roadmap to understand better the economic priorities and investments driving these changes.

What is evident from the Galen Growth Digital Health Innovation Report is that while the total dollars of investment in digital health saw a steep decline from the exuberant investment during the height of the COVID pandemic, the category has gained greater importance among health systems seeking to make significant advances in how patient-care, work-flow processes, preventive care and reimbursement analyses play out.

AI, ChatGPT and GenAI investment is not aspirational – the focus is mainly practical and operational.  Those accessing the full report during ViVE will immediately gain valuable information to guide internal planning. Medika Life will update this article tomorrow with a link to the full report.

Will ViVE solve – as Eric Wicklund teases readers – the health system’s “biggest dilemmas?” Is that even it’s mission?  Likely not. But the people who attend ViVE will be looking for insights and information that can guide solutions. The Galen Growth “Digital Health Innovation | 2024 Report” will be one of the big takeaways that will spark conversation, ideas, and hopefully, as Eric reflects, some concrete solutions.