Apple dominates surging smartwatch sales, but Google is entering the fray: Growing interest in smartwatches and headphones in emerging markets like India indicate potential for Google and partners to grow Android’s ecosystem with devices like the new Pixel Watch

Hims & Hers, Carbon Health team up to take on retail and virtual care: The pair is building an ecosystem of virtual care, retail, and in-person healthcare products—we detail what the partnership means for both entities.

Meta uses fitness data to tap into Apple’s ecosystem: Bringing the metaverse’s fitness stats into Apple Health via Oculus headsets helps Apple users close their activity rings and gives Meta synergy with a larger user ecosystem.

Intermountain Healthcare is handing off its retail pharmacy operations to CVS after experiencing massive losses with the venture—a nod to how digital health transformation is inciting greater cross-pollination across the healthcare ecosystem.

The news: Digital health companies Amwell and Transcarent rolled out new mental health offerings. Amwell expanded its virtual care ecosystem to include Amwell Comprehensive Behavioral Health. The program builds upon SilverCloud’s behavioral health programs and can be personalized to the user. Transcarent’s new program lets members access therapy either in-person or virtually within three days.

Making Amazon Care visits accessible through Amazon Echo could fit in neatly with Amazon’s strategy to become a connected ecosystem for care: An Amazon Care physician could quickly send a patient’s prescription to Amazon Pharmacy after conducting an audio-only telehealth visit through Echo, for instance.

Report: The Digital Health Ecosystem.

The Digital Health Ecosystem. Latest DTx market trends and companies in growing digital health sector. eMarketer and Business Insider Intelligence have joined forces to become the leading research company focused on digital transformation. For more insights and key statistics on the biggest trends in today's most disruptive industries, subscribe to Chart of the Day.

Digital health transformation is spurring an explosion of digitized health data—making analytics capabilities more important than ever.

Health systems that are already looking to build out their digital health ecosystems may find it more convenient to invest in a comprehensive solution, like Philips'. In addition to all its HealthSuite features, Philips also has its own cybersecurity services arm, and a remote patient monitoring offering (via its $2.8 billion acquisition of BioTelemetry).

How we got here: Google Cloud’s new API diversifies its portfolio of healthcare cloud offerings, which have already nabbed the attention of players from every corner of the digital health ecosystem.

And it’s not just patients who are warming up to the idea of telehealth being a permanent fixture of the healthcare ecosystem:. 58% of physicians view telehealth more favorably than they did pre-pandemic. And 40% of consumers say they’ll continue to use telehealth in the future—up from 11% pre-pandemic, per a 2021 analysis from McKinsey. What does the next chapter of telehealth look like?

The news: Uber is opening its ride-hailing ecosystem to New York City taxis to help offset driver shortage and rising fares, per TechCrunch. Here’s how it works: New York City riders will be able to hail taxi cabs right on the Uber app later this spring.

How we got here: This isn’t Best Buy’s first foray into digital health—it acquired two other healthcare companies before:. It acquired GreatCall in 2018 for $800 million and Critical Signal Technologies in 2019.

Best Buy Health also has its own senior-focused virtual care ecosystem that connects remote patient monitoring (RPM) devices, telehealth, and home visits. Best Buy’s Caring Center specialists observe users’ health data and reach out when they spot any unusual changes. When necessary, the Caring Center team can connect users with their preferred on-demand care provider.

We then outline the benefits that virtual care offers for players across the healthcare ecosystem—including health systems, payers, and clinical researchers.

These partnerships indicate that Microsoft is casting a wide net across the healthcare ecosystem, and it could synergize its different healthcare endeavors down the road. 2. In March, Microsoft launched Microsoft Mesh. This is a new mixed reality platform that uses its HoloLens headset to project a hologram of a person or objects that users can interact with as if they’re there in person.

VillageMD introduced DocOS in 2018, a digital health platform focused on primary care.

In May 2020, for example, Nvidia launched Clara Guardian, an application framework and partner ecosystem that combine smart sensors and multimodal AI to help developers build smart hospital solutions like fall detection, infection control, thermal sensing, and patient monitoring.

This report explains the rise of tech-focused SDOH initiatives among US health insurers and hospitals, unpacks how these entities’ heavier focus on SDOH has ushered in opportunities for digital health vendors and tech companies operating at the periphery of healthcare to help address nonclinical health gaps, and lays out the factors driving the prioritization of SDOH and inhibiting these efforts’ growth.