Rock Health’s Top 50 in Digital Health honorees share their reflections on what it means to be a leader, changemaker, and inspiration in digital health.
The landscape of digital health innovation is rapidly evolving, shaped by the interplay of policy, co-opetition, and community. Insights from this year’s Rock Health Summit highlighted the growing importance of these initiatives in advancing digital health.
I’ve been attending the Rock Health Summit regularly since 2015, joining my peers at the conference that brings together diverse minds from technology, medicine, public health, and beyond for inspired conversation and connection. This year was particularly special, as I was honored to be recognized as one of Rock Health’s Top 50 in Digital Health.
These awards recognize digital health leaders who are making health care better for all, and I was grateful to be included as a “Luminary” in health care, or, as described by organizers, one of the “leading lights advancing novel ideas and new approaches that improve health for humanity.”
In addition to feeling deeply grateful to be part of such an incredible community advancing health care, I left Rock Health inspired by several key takeaways, each offering a promising glimpse into the future of digital health innovation.
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Policy prioritization. Unlike past summits, this year’s panelists universally talked about policy and its widespread impact on innovation as well as scalability. It’s a strong reminder (especially in a presidential election year) that policy is an important component of advancing significant initiatives in health care. It’s also why we at Industry Initiatives have prioritized sharing insights we’ve collected on primary care access and outcomes with key policymakers at the state and federal level, based on our experiences with Blue Shield of California's Primary Care Reimagined program as well as our participation in the California Advanced Primary Care Initiative led by Purchaser Business Group on Health’s (PBGH) California Quality Collaborative (CQC) and the Integrated Healthcare Association (IHA). Collaboration and sharing lessons learned between industry stakeholders and policymakers is an essential part of advancing effective policy that aligns to our vision for health care.
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A maturing landscape. Digital health leaders are finding new, more sophisticated ways to make change in the industry. In addition to influencing and identifying impactful policy measures, I also observed an uptick in co-opetition, or industry peers finding new ways to work together to accomplish bigger goals. This is similar to the work Blue Shield of California has accomplished as a founding contributor and participant of PBGH’s California Quality Collaborative (CQC), which brought together multiple payers all focused on advancing primary care to a high-performing, value-based care model that reduces costs and improves quality and equity. This co-opetitive approach, where we can break through the silos of competition and misaligned incentives to find mutually beneficial solutions, is essential for scaling industry-wide reform.
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An interconnected community. As a community, digital health has changed dynamically over the last 10 years, but remains an interconnected landscape. This integration across the health care system, and shared mission of taking a broader view of health care to adopt a whole person approach, is also reflected in the work we do as an Industry Initiatives team to collaborate on data sharing. We’re proud to be contributing to a world in which data is more connected, accurate, and relevant to advance whole person care, including our work in California to advance interoperability through support of and alignment with the state’s Data Exchange Framework.
Rock Health is a great litmus test for innovation in health care, and an opportunity for us to be reflective about the work we prioritize at Industry Initiatives. This year’s event has underscored how important community, co-opetition, and policy are to achieve a better, stronger, and more equitable health care system.
