The news: Withings rolled out a new remote patient monitoring (RPM) program: Withings RPM.

• The program uses Withings' connected devices (smart scales, watches, thermometers and blood pressure cuffs) to monitor health metrics like heart rate, blood pressure, and sleep patterns.

How we got here: Withings has been inching into the RPM space for a while now, so a full-on launch of its own RPM product makes sense.

• Back in 2019, Withings launched its B2B business for health data analytics and remote patient monitoring.
• Last July, it teamed up with digital diabetes management company One Drop to combine Withings’ RPM tools (smart scale, blood pressure monitor) with One Drop’s digital platform.
• This year, the med tech giant made two health tracking-related acquisitions already. In January it acquired France-based medical device firm Impeto Medical, and in February it bought personalized fitness and nutrition app 8fit.

Why could it succeed? Withings offers medical-grade wearables already in use in clinical environments vs consumer-friendly ones like Fitbits and Apple Watches. That gives it a leg-up when it comes to proving its clinical efficacy.

• For example, clinicians are already using data from Withings devices in their EHR workflows.
• Meanwhile, clinicians are hesitant to use mainstream wearable data to inform their decision-making.

Trendspotting: We’ve entered the stage of digital health transformation where if you’re a digital health company, RPM is more of a need-to-have.

• Insider Intelligence forecasts that by 2025, more than a quarter of the US population is expected to regularly use RPM. We forecast that by 2025, there will be 70.6 million RPM users in the US.
• More than one-third of US hospitals and clinics said that in five years, RPM will surpass in-patient monitoring in usage, and 43% expected them to see about the same usage, per a Vivalink survey from February 2021.