The New Era of Consumer Digital Health Product Offerings
What is my take on the Key Trends in Consumer Digital Health?
Given my experience in digital healthcare working on clinician- and consumer-facing strategy, product, and content, as well as my clinical experience as a primary care physician at Kaiser Permanente, I get asked all the time: What do you think about [X]?
And [X] could be a wide range of topic areas ranging from digital primary care and chronic condition management systems like One Medical or Omada Health to AI ambient scribes or wearable technologies.
The digital health space is vast. One theme remains constant across all personas: Patients and clinicians want easy, effective, efficient, and cost-contained solutions that allow them to make the smartest decisions aligned with their values - solutions that deliver the greatest ROI in terms of both financial investment and time.
Let’s Start with Proactive Patients
The healthcare landscape is rapidly shifting as consumers move from passive patients to proactive participants in their own well-being. The rise of the “proactive health consumer” (especially in tech-forward countries like the US, UK, and Germany) is driving a surge in innovative digital health products designed to place control, knowledge, and daily engagement directly in the hands of consumers. This new era is characterized by consumers seeking transparency, personalization, convenience, and real-time data, redefining how health products and services are conceived and delivered. Interestingly, we’re seeing a similar trend in other geo-regions, including China, Japan, Southeast Asia, and Latin America, as the consumer population becomes more digitally empowered.
1. Personalized Wellness and Prevention
The explosion of personalized digital healthcare solutions reflects a deeper trend beyond dissatisfaction with legacy healthcare systems. It’s about the rise of consumer agency. People no longer want to wait weeks to see a doctor for generalized advice. Instead, they want data-driven, proactive tools tailored to their individual needs, bodies, clinical conditions, and preferences.
Just like how e-commerce revolutionized retail by enabling personalized, self-directed shopping experiences, digital health is doing the same by letting consumers take control of their wellness journeys, with or without clinical gatekeepers.
This shift is especially evident in tools and platforms that focus on long-term prevention, performance, and habit formation, often incorporating wearables, smart sensors, health coaching, and AI to adapt in real time to a person’s behavior or physiology. The goal isn’t just to track steps; it’s to build a dynamic model of health that adjusts and improves over time for that individual.
Popular examples include:
Fitness apps that adapt workouts based on real-time heart rate and recovery
Personalized nutrition plans based on microbiome, DNA, or CGM (continuous glucose monitor) data
Virtual coaching platforms that support ongoing habit change across sleep, stress, and fitness, such as Omada, Hinge, etc.
Preventive apps that alert users to potential health risks before symptoms arise
Reactive care is old school. It’s a lifestyle shift powered by data, design, and individual values. Consumers aren’t just avoiding illness; they’re optimizing for energy, longevity, and performance on their own terms, and they won’t be slowed down by referrals.
2. Expansion of Remote Care Tools
With lower margins and financial pressures to provide more care to more patients more cost-effectively, healthcare systems are expanding care delivery beyond the walls of traditional hospitals and clinics. Consumers are aligned with this trend as they too want to avoid unnecessary in-person visits if they can receive care that delivers on quality and safety from home.
We’re seeing a steep increase in:
Remote patient monitoring tools using connected sensors and apps to track chronic conditions and send data to both consumers and providers for timely intervention
Telehealth platforms offering not just clinical visits but also ongoing health management and behavioral health services
The biggest barriers remain reimbursement and provider adoption, and if reimbursement improves, so will provider adoption. But the demand is clear.
3. AI-Powered Health Guidance
Tech-savvy consumers now do their research before engaging with healthcare systems. They want to be informed, active participants in clinical decision-making, and ideally, they want to prevent the need for clinical engagement altogether.
AI is increasingly being used to fill this need:
Symptom checker chatbots and virtual health assistants analyze symptoms, recommend next steps, and facilitate scheduling or prescription refills
AI also drives customized self-care and directed-care recommendations in nutrition, fitness, and mental wellness
This gives consumers a way to triage and act on their health concerns independently, with always-on access to support.
4. Connected Wearable Devices
I remember when the most advanced thing a Fitbit could do was count steps. It was neat but not transformative. Today’s wearables are multi-functional devices that integrate deeply into daily life, and that’s where their real health impact lies.
As a physician, I love that my watch can call for emergency services if I fall, warn me of irregular heart rhythms, or even tell me if I’ve been in an environment that could damage my hearing. But I might not wear it every day if it didn’t also tell me when I get a text or when I’m late to a meeting.
Wearables have normalized health as part of our everyday routines. That means more consistent data collection and stronger insights for both consumers and clinicians.
Modern wearables now:
Collect continuous data on heart rate, blood oxygen, sleep quality, and more
Provide real-time alerts and actionable recommendations to support daily health decisions
Health has become an integrated part of our digital lives, not an isolated, after-the-fact event.
5. On-Demand and DIY Health Solutions with Instant Access, Flexibility, and Autonomy
While personalized wellness is about long-term optimization, this trend is about immediacy, convenience, and skip-the-clinic (or lab) autonomy. It’s the rise of health-as-a-service that is frictionless, responsive, and consumer-controlled.
Consumers now expect:
Instant access to AI symptom checkers, telehealth visits, second opinions, and even prescriptions and lab tests
Shoppable health marketplaces offering diagnostics, supplements, and virtual services that deliver optionality and flexibility
Clean-label, personalized supplements with transparent claims and integrated digital tracking
For many, this means skipping the traditional system entirely unless absolutely necessary. It’s not that they don’t value professional care; they just don’t want to wait for it when digital tools can deliver faster answers and greater perceived value for the time and effort they’ve invested.
This trend is especially prevalent among younger, digitally native users. They want to be able to troubleshoot a concern, make a decision, and take action, all within minutes, wherever they are (read: mobile-optimized but not restricted to mobile app).
From Passive Patients to “Health CEOs”
Today’s consumers are no longer mere recipients of care. They are informed decision-makers, empowered by digital tools to manage their health daily. This "consumerization 2.0" means:
Health products must be user-friendly, transparent, and integrate seamlessly into busy lives
Clinicians now need to be scientific experts, as well as health coaches, guiding consumers on how to use real-time data to make the best decisions
Platforms that blend physical, mental, and social well-being are gaining traction—reflecting a more holistic view of health
Looking Ahead
The ongoing transformation in digital health is putting consumers firmly in control, thanks to accessible technology, AI, and new direct-to-consumer offerings. Companies that succeed in this market combine real health insights with intuitive design, strong privacy protection, and constant innovation that delivers value. As this new wave of products matures, we can expect even greater personalization, broader accessibility, and a seamless, patient-centered health journey.
Ideally, these digital health innovations also marry with the consumers’ healthcare systems so that clinicians can also gain insights and help guide decision-making.
In a follow-up post, I’ll explore how these consumer-driven trends are reshaping the expectations, workflows, and roles of healthcare providers, as well as what it means for those building the next generation of clinician-facing tools.
