Digital health had another standout year in 2021, with startups raising an eye-popping $29.1 billion across 729 deals, according to Rock Health, a venture fund dedicated to digital health. Will the digital health market sustain this record level of growth in 2024?

Seeing this growth, now it's a good time to talk about the motives of investment firms and explore the hidden gems of digital health investments: which trends stand out and more importantly, how to assess the technologies and companies that pop up.

In this book, we are sharing insights into the most innovative companies and technologies in digital health, and Artificial Intelligence:

1 . Digital Health By The Numbers: The global digital health market was valued at over 200 billion U.S. dollars in 2020. According to recent forecasts, this figure is expected to exceed 500 billion dollars by 2024. What will be the leading drivers of this growth?

2. Where To Invest? The Top 24 Digital Health Technologies: From Virtual Reality, through Artificial Intelligence to At-home lab tests, what are the top technologies to look out for

3. Key Learnings from Successful and Failed Startups: Why meeting real-life patient/clinical needs is key and overhype should be avoided

We hope you will find our publication a useful addition to the toolset of investors to find the next big thing in digital health and A.I. that can make the lives of patients and the job of medical professionals better.

Along with the enhanced healthcare landscape that digital health brings along like remote care, A.I. tools or 3D printing, there is the pressing issue of privacy. How secure is secure data? Is my health data on my smartphone/fitness device safe? Can Google, Amazon, or Facebook buy my health records from my hospital? Can I have an influence on who in the hospital can see and read my records? Today, everyone needs to understand that there is no digital health without sacrificing a part of our privacy. The advanced technologies fueling the transformation cannot improve without our data; and without it they can’t be implemented as part of regular medical care. And COVID-19 has only made things worse.

In the age of digital health, it’s not a question of whether we should do this but how we can do it in a way that protects what is valuable and vulnerable. 

Such a discussion is at the centerpiece of our new e-book “Hackers, Breaches and the Value of Health Data” In it, we describe the three cornerstones of privacy of every privacy discussion going forward: the traditional, the new and the future spheres that deal with your health data, and put forward recommendations on how you can start protecting yourself.

Privacy and security issues pertaining to the digital health era are complex and multifactorial. These aren’t likely to get any simpler as more and more advanced technologies get integrated into the field. As such, every stakeholder in the healthcare landscape must contemplate the need for change – yourself included.

Every medical specialty will transform differently due to the technological revolution. On certain fields, such as nursing, psychiatry, obstetrics and gynecology, innovation will have much less impact than on dentistry, cardiology or pathology. In this e-book we specify in detail how the appearance of artificial intelligence, sensors, wearables, VR/AR or robots affect each medical specialty in order to be able to discern what skills physicians will need in the future.

We aim to show how physicians of the various professions can successfully prepare for the sweeping changes coming with the waves of technology. We want to go against the fears that artificial intelligence, robots or any other innovative solutions will take over doctors’ jobs. While digital technologies certainly have the capacity to take over administrative tasks, organizational processes or even simpler diagnostic steps, the expertise of medical professionals is irreplaceable. Especially if they recognize that their jobs can be much more efficient, creative or even fun if they embrace digital technologies. At the moment, as these innovations are still in the early days of their usage, that doesn’t always seem so.

However, we are certain that technologies will unburden doctors, nurses and other medical professionals in the long run, especially if they learn in time how to cooperate with technologies successfully. Here’s our guide on how to do that.