Results from our landmark national survey on the adoption trends in digital health
Historically, the consumer space in digital health has been one of the most challenging categories for investors, including Rock Health. The failure to discover and build massive companies has led to fear, anchored to widely-held perceptions of the consumer relationship to healthcare.
In search of real data around the space, we surveyed thousands of individuals (representing the entire U.S. adult population). Our goal was to answer a few key questions: 1) What are the current rates of penetration for the major B2C digital health categories? 2) What are the primary demographic and attitudinal drivers of adoption? 3) What are individual’s attitudes towards data privacy and who do consumers trust in terms of sharing health data? This report presents the data from our most recent survey, run over the summer and including over 4,000 individuals.
The results may surprise you. Often-heard digital health memes, including that the only users in these categories are young, educated, rich, and healthy turn out to be false. Instead, our study found that an individual’s attitude towards healthcare (responsibility, self-management, and willingness to pay out-of-pocket) was a major indicator of adoption. We found the unhealthy are adopting faster than the healthy. And finally that digital health adoption closely mirrors general technology adoption (an unassailable trend across all demographics). However, given that penetration is still low (i.e., in the early adopter side) across many of the surveyed categories, we fully expect demographic gaps to open up, particularly around age and income.
The need for consumer engagement in healthcare has never been higher. And yet, nearly half of Americans have used only one or none of the major digital health categories. No iconic company exists in the consumer category, perhaps representing one of the largest opportunities in digital health. We’re excited to add some data to the conversation. continua a leggere