A marketplace for digital health

Intro: In the coming years, we can expect a larger amount of valuable digital health solutions to be launched. This post analyses one scenario for an ideal marketplace for digital health: the corporate well-being market

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Welcome to “A Healthusiasm World”, a newsletter by Christophe Jauquet on making customers healthy & happy.

1. Discover how both healthcare and consumer companies are experience-driven health businesses now.
2. Learn what's next for customer experience, purpose-driven marketing, and digital health.
3. Be inspired to design the most engaging health experiences yourself.

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A marketplace for future-proof ideas

I’m a chronic analyser and overthinking. Until I discovered meditation, there was not a single thing that did not trigger my brain. I see. I analyse. I challenge. I adapt for the future. My mind could easily be considered a marketplace for future-proof ideas. My mind got me into this business of trend watching, future thinking, or strategic foresight. I follow what comes naturally and then put my thoughts into structure and canvasses. This is why I inspire and advise my clients on the future of health business. Want to know what I can do for you? Don’t mind booking a moment in my Calendar .

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A marketplace for digital health

Interest, usage and investment in digital health solutions have increased these past years significantly. But it’s only a precursor of what is yet to come. I expect that, soon enough, we will be inundated by valuable digital health solutions. Ok, I agree that inundated might sound radical. But at the very least, several digital solutions will radically change how we do health business today.

In my previous newsletter, I wrote about how this tsunami of digital health solutions will turn the first line caregivers into careguiders . After all, digital health will be taking up a considerable number of tasks in the first line. This change even risks instigating the first burning platform in healthcare, forcing General Practitioners, pharmacies and sick funds to reinvent themselves into careguiders.

Here are the related “The digital tsunami scenarios”:

1. The first line burning platform: From caregivers to careguiders

2. The marketplace for digital health

3. The biomarker tsunami

4. The platform tsunami

In the current newsletter, I aim to highlight another potential future scenario from this upcoming tsunami of solutions: the marketplace for digital health solutions.

Table of content

• The go-to-market strategy
• Companies and corporations as customers
• Corporate Well-being
• A healthy working environment
• Making employees healthy & happy
• People aspire to become healthy & happy
• The company car market
• The marketplace for digital health
• Related keynotes

The go-to-market strategy

I’ve been involved as an advisor, mentor, board member, or investor in several dozens of digital health start-ups in the past four years. Most struggle with similar challenges. But one struggle has always caught my attention:

who is the ideal customer of the digital health start-up?

There are a couple of options, and each comes with considerable challenges or consequences:

1. Direct to consumers or patients: This is the most desirable option for many digital health start-ups because it focuses on the end-user, the one for which the start-up was founded. But at the same time, this approach requires considerable, long-term marketing investments and typically generates a relatively slow uptake in usage.

2. The Healthcare Professionals: It might make perfect sense for a health solution to focus on the Healthcare Professional (HCP), the second most crucial factor in managing one’s health. But it is essential to understand that most HCPs are not trained in digital health. They are also already submerged with new medical products, clinical studies and related administrative obligations. Add to that the shortage of doctors and the rising patient expectations, and you understand that it is challenging to integrate a digital health solution into prescription habits. Reimbursement might feel like the way out of this deadlock, but it adds bureaucratic complexity without more certainty of uptake.

3. The pharma companies: Ever since their ‘beyond the pill’ focus, pharma companies have been constantly on the lookout for valuable services to complement their products. But what may seem like a straightforward approach comes with the complexity that pharma companies are over-consulted, risk-averse and painfully slow in decision making. The lack of a long-term business model for this approach makes this a mere tactic with a short-term objective for the start-up.

4. The Government: One of the missions of governments is to enhance the health and well-being of all citizens by providing effective health and human services. The government might undoubtedly be the ideal customer to reach the broadest audience at once. But solutions that are not funded or issued by governments are rarely distributed by them (except in Singapore, for example). In reality, choosing the government as your customer is only a valuable option for digital health solutions that are already widely used or have significantly proven their worth. This is not the most prominent pathway for younger digital health solutions.

5. The Companies and Corporations: This is the route for which at least one in two digital health solutions are opting. Driven by the urgent need for more employee well-being, many start-ups have decided to target corporates and other organisations looking for corporate well-being solutions. Early seed start-ups could survive the first two years with merely a couple of clients. When more clients are needed in a later stage, they could even direct themselves to insurances or other aggregators to gain speed and extend their reach in the market. But then again, today, there are perhaps too many solutions going down that path, causing bottlenecks and choice overload on the employer side. Regardless, it still feels like the fastest and least complicated route compared to the other options for digital health start-ups. I do not see that digital health start-ups will hold back from choosing the employer as their customer. Neither do I expect corporations and companies to scale back their corporate well-being initiatives in the coming years

This leaves us with the question:

are companies and corporates the ideal customer for the upcoming tsunami of digital health solutions?

Not just yet, in my opinion.

Here’s why: There is no successful Corporate Marketplace just yet.

Companies and corporations as a customer

The most apparent corporate marketplace would, of course, be related to corporate well-being. And rightfully so. I’ve been fortunate to be able to learn a lot about corporate well-being in the recent years: I’ve mentored digital health start-ups focused on corporate well-being, advised different corporations and insurance companies on their health business strategy, interviewed several dozens of international corporate well-being leads (incl Google ), and have been involved in some health & well-being initiatives within organisations. During these years, I’ve seen the market grow massively. But I don’t believe it has a proper marketplace for digital health solutions yet.

Corporate Well-being

This is mainly because employers are still figuring out their role in corporate well-being. Do they need to facilitate a healthy environment or the health itself of employees? Meanwhile, the professional world deals with unseen numbers of workplace stress and burnout. Corporate well-being quickly became essential to any company’s coping mechanism, post-covid transformation, and corporate branding in the current war for talent. Still, to me, corporate well-being feels like the orphan looking for a home within companies. Even sincere and valuable initiatives often lack a longer-term vision and strategy.

I believe that the main struggle lies in the question mentioned above: “Do we need to facilitate a healthy environment or support the employee in managing his or her health & well-being?” Because of this ambiguity, many health & well-being solutions don’t fit either objective very well and miss their intended goal. In the worst case, health & well-being initiatives may even come across to employees as indulgent bribes to make up for the demanding workplace expectations. But in the meantime, hardly anything changes within the company.

Therefore, many agree that both objectives need to be separated and approached differently. We need to realise that “Facilitating a healthy working environment” is far more than having ergonomic chairs and screens at eye height. On the other hand, we also need to understand that “supporting the health & well-being of employees” is more than team building activities. They are different handles that serve to influence completely other things. Yet today, I see too many solutions (and aggregators or marketplaces) that don’t make a clear distinction. Teambuilding activities are expected to facilitate a healthy working environment, and ergonomic chairs make employees healthy & happy.

On my website, I elaborate on why it is vital to make this distinction in the next segment. I will also explain how I expect a new marketplace to arise from it that will welcome the tsunami of digital health solutions.

Click on the image below to read the full blog post.

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I see a future scenario where leasing-like marketplaces emerge that only negotiate the options and the prices for a catalogue of digital health solutions. Besides convenience and flexibility, these marketplaces won’t provide many additional services to the corporations. Once the catalogue is negotiated, employees and digital health solutions will then meet similarly as when leasing a company car. They’ll focus on what fits their needs, expectations and aspirations in life. Digital Health solutions will then be a welcomed corporate advantage for people who simply want to be healthy & happy, even when not at work.

Consequently, these marketplaces will help corporations distinguish between “building a healthy environment” and “making employees healthy & happy”. But what’s more important is that a tsunami of digital health solutions is coming our way. These digital health solutions are looking for easy access to the market, which does not exist just yet. But the corporate market might just be the right place for that.

So what's your take on it?

Do you believe we will see the current corporate well-being evolve into a vibrant, efficient marketplace for digital health?

Happy to hear your thoughts.

-Christophe-

Keynote speaker on the future of (health) business.

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