SUMMARY: According to Harvard Business Review, “digital health solutions and technology will play a crucial role in the difficult work of optimizing processes and systems for greater efficiency, financial viability, and enhanced outcomes. While this is true digital health won’t go anywhere unless there is a renewed effort on the user experience.
Category Archive: Digital Health
SUMMARY: McKinsey estimates that global digital-health revenues—from telemedicine, online pharmacies, wearable devices, and so on—will rise from $350bn last year to $600bn in 2024. I’m not so sure.
WHAT’S UP?: It’s time to admit that the FDA is completely out of touch regarding DTC advertising. Fair balance is not being read in ads or listened to on TV, and the language used in fair balance is too often complicated for online health seekers.
QUICK READ: About 74% of patients in the U.S. would use telehealth services and 74% of patients are comfortable with communicating with their doctors using technology instead of seeing them in person. As social distancing becomes reality will patients embrace telehealth?
QUICK READ: The Federal Drug Administration’s Office of Prescription Drug Promotion (OPDP) on Wednesday issued the first warning letter specific to paid-search ads since 2014. The FDA said that the search results did not include any fair balance. This is an example of how out of date the FDA’s Office of Prescription Drug Promotion (OPDP) really is.
QUICK READ: Just as I had written on this site a Chief Digital Officer for a top pharma company has left after just twenty-four months on the job. Culture destroys even the best business intentions. Digital is so important to pharma but so is old business models driven by a merry-go-round of pharma lifers.
SUMMARY
- eHealth reality doesn’t quite live up to the promise.
- Even the Apple Watch studies are in doubt.
- We need data on what people do as a result of eHealth apps and devices.
- Only HCPs can diagnose and treat patients based on medical history.

KEY IDEA: A panel of leading cardiologists weighed in in the Apple Watch and it wasn’t pretty. While they like the idea that it can alert patients to a potential problem they will never accept the apps, or any apps, a diagnostic tool.