With $12 billion in funding, a 62% increase over 2018, digital health had its best investment year on record in 2020. What does the investment tell us about this emerging industry? Which segment(s) are of the greatest interest to investors and why? And how will this record funding year impact the provision of healthcare and health outcomes?

There isn’t a commercial team on the planet that isn’t asking “how will we sell – and grow – in this new environment?” While much has changed, sales objectives remain the same: increase penetration, drive market share, win new customers. But to succeed, sales professionals need to work differently, re-skill and adopt a new mindset.

Investments in medical imaging are being propelled by the need for more efficiency and cost-effectiveness, as well as technological innovations that help improve accuracy and quality in the delivery of healthcare.

When it comes to building customer relationships, the “traditional” healthcare approach emphasizes face-to-face outbound customer engagement through visits with healthcare providers, and communication & education for patients. Inbound and outbound customer interactions via Contact Centers and Inside Sales functions, often managed separately, are focused on responding to access requests, providing medical information questions, and addressing patient support needs.

Healthcare in the United States is plagued with inefficiencies. Despite best efforts, providing consumers the care they need at a reasonable cost has evaded policymakers and industry alike. Telemedicine is the most obvious example of a solution that has underachieved its potential. While the COVID-19 pandemic has shown how useful telemedicine can be, its role in healthcare delivery is unclear. In addition, reimbursement policies and the infrastructure needed for implementation remain uncertain.

While COVID-19 has triggered the use of telemedicine seemingly overnight, it remains unclear how sustained adoption will be. To understand more about its potential, the Luminous team took a look at the social media discourse around telemedicine. On average, sentiment is positive (20% positive, 5% negative), indicating that there is enthusiasm for telemedicine

An increasing number of cell & gene therapies are in clinical trials providing the hope of treatment for patients who have exhausted their options or continue to suffer despite the best efforts of healthcare professionals. The progress made in the area of personalized medicine in recent years has opened up the field and garnered the attention of investors. However, many commercial challenges remain, particularly for autologous therapies.

Rare diseases present complex challenges for both diagnosis and treatment. Prevalence and severity vary enormously across patients. Genetic sequencing has brought an extraordinary understanding of what causes diseases. However, in both symptoms and treatments, there are few commonalities among patients.

At $95 billion in 2019, Digital Health (DH) is rapidly approaching 8% of the $12 trillion global healthcare market. Today 56% of DH is computer/web-based (eHealth) and 44% is mobile (mHealth). However in the next five years, mobile, offering greater ease of use, convenience, and accessibility, will grow more quickly and overtake computer/web.

Contact centers are emerging as a key, direct point of contact between brands and their customers. Today, on average, 30% of inbound calls result in a reportable regulatory event (adverse event, product quality complaint, or both). Of those calls, at least 60% could be more patient-centric, more streamlined, and/or more valuable to the customer, whether patients or HCPs. Contact centers are responsible for one of the most valuable kinds of customer touch-points: unsolicited, customer-initiated interactions.

These days sales teams are faced with an enormous challenge: how to build and nurture customer relationships remotely. Like online dating, virtual selling is not the same as meeting face-to-face. While many people doubted it, today, couples all over the world are building meaningful relationships online before meeting face to face, resulting in 3 out of 5 marriages. Indeed, remote relationships are more difficult to start and sustain because it is harder to authentically connect and build trust. So we asked ourselves, what can sales professionals learn from online dating? What do people typically do wrong? And which skills, tools, and mindsets apply to remote selling?

To bring the voices of field sales professionals to the discussion, Luminous executed an online survey and in-depth interviews with sales representatives in pharmaceuticals and medical devices. Most significantly, sales reps say relationships with HCPs will continue to be their “superpower”.

Not surprisingly, the US is the world’s biggest spender on healthcare and most significantly, chronic disease care. While globally, 57% of total healthcare spend ($12 trillion) is on chronic diseases, in the US, they make up 87% of total healthcare spend ($3.9 trillion). This chronic disease spending represents 15% of the US economy and has driven investment and innovation in mobile health (mHealth).

Despite the wide availability of technologies to monitor, share data, and interact, the patient experience remains “event-based”. These in-person interactions are increasingly inefficient and, with the presence of an epidemic or pandemic, present additional risks to patients and providers alike. However, visits with providers, pharmacists, as well as other interventions, will always be critical to the delivery of healthcare. Why? Because, above all, healthcare is personal.

Data from the Journal of the American Medical Association reveals the devastating impact of underlying health conditions on patients with COVID-19 (see figure below). Those with hypertension, obesity, and diabetes, among others, face a significantly higher risk of hospitalization and death. Effective treatment for these diseases has never been more relevant and urgent.