Scaling Digital Health in Healthcare Systems: Strategies for Success

Digital health is becoming more mainstream within health systems, especially in light of ongoing challenges like workforce shortages. However, the adoption, implementation, and scale achieved by these technologies across use cases and types of health systems remain inconsistent.

Some organizations leverage digital health tools effectively as a mainstay of their organizational strategy, while others continue limited pilot approaches. Understanding the factors that enable digital health tools to achieve scale within health systems is critically important in today's healthcare landscape.

Today's healthcare landscape has evolved beyond the traditional model of one clinician serving a patient. Team-based care approaches have become the norm across the industry, offering greater scalability in care delivery. However, with the labor scarcity health systems are facing, this model is under pressure.

For digital health companies to unlock health system adoption, they must emphasize how their solutions can enable and support care teams. Successful digital tools create "negative work" – taking effort out for clinicians rather than adding to their burden. According to a 2025 study, 45% of healthcare services worldwide have adopted data integration software to help streamline clinical workflows and reduce administrative burden.

When digital health solutions demonstrate clear benefits to care providers, adoption increases dramatically. For example, virtual care solutions saw 80% of survey respondents reporting having accessed care via telemedicine, up 8 percentage points from the previous year. This adoption is helping to address the pressing workforce shortage, with McKinsey researchers projecting a shortage of 200,000 to 450,000 registered nurses by 2025.

Successful digital health adoption requires solutions that bring value at multiple levels. First, solutions need to provide tangible benefits to end-users, whether patients or care providers. For patients, this means sustainable, repeatable benefits that ensure engagement. For care providers, integration into existing workflows is essential for meaningful impact.

Digital solutions must also bring value to the health system as a whole. This could involve supporting care teams with efficiency-boosting technology or augmenting services with additional care options. The global digital health market reflects this growing recognition of value, projected to reach $1,190.4 billion by 2032, growing at a CAGR of 16.7% from $264.1 billion in 2023.

Addressing multiple stakeholders' needs within the health system is crucial. Digital health implementations that consider the concerns and requirements of all key stakeholders tend to gain broader support and achieve better outcomes. This multi-level value proposition often leads to organic adoption throughout an organization, as departments that experience benefits become internal advocates for the solution.

Digital health companies and health systems both face challenges in establishing productive partnerships. The process is often time-consuming and complex, with health systems frequently lacking clear processes for evaluating potential digital health partners.

A more collaborative approach is needed, where digital health companies work together to develop structured processes for engaging with health systems. This can help health systems assess where and how different digital solutions could bring value in a more systematic way. A 2025 industry report found that organizations implementing collaborative digital health approaches saw adoption rates increase by 27% compared to those implementing isolated point solutions.

The goal should be creating a more streamlined process for implementing digital health solutions into health systems. This requires communication between all stakeholders and a commitment to finding solutions that benefit everyone involved. With the right approach, digital health companies and health systems can create a more effective and sustainable healthcare ecosystem.

Many of today's healthcare systems and vendors are attempting to convert providers practicing in fee-for-service (FFS) environments into value-based care (VBC) practitioners. In reality, most providers see patients under both business models within the same day and under the same roof. This situation creates significant operational challenges.

Recent measurements show 93.5 million Americans are now in accountable care organization (ACO) arrangements, with 73% of payers believing alternative payment models will rise as the industry moves toward value-based care. Yet fee-for-service remains the most prevalent payment arrangement for physicians in the U.S., according to a 2023 AMA Policy Research Perspectives report.

There may be a need to establish entirely new practices specifically designed to operate under value-based arrangements, with different infrastructure, dashboards, practitioners, and compensation structures. These new entities would be positioned to benefit from the gains of doing VBC well, without struggling with the challenges of treating patients under different business models within the same core infrastructure.

Digital health solutions can play a critical role in bridging this gap, providing tools that work effectively in both reimbursement environments while helping to manage the transition.

The healthcare industry faces an acute workforce shortage that threatens to undermine care delivery. By 2028, a nationwide healthcare worker shortage of over 100,000 is projected, according to Mercer research. The Association of American Medical Colleges projects a shortage of up to 85,000 physicians by 2036.

Digital health tools offer several promising approaches to address these workforce challenges. Artificial intelligence is transforming healthcare delivery by supporting clinical decision-making and reducing administrative burden. The global AI in healthcare market is projected to reach $238.5 billion by 2032, growing at a CAGR of 38.73%. These tools help providers make more accurate diagnoses, develop personalized treatment plans, and identify health risks earlier.

North America dominates the global AI in healthcare market with 59.1% market share, with 36% of healthcare organizations having implemented natural language processing software to streamline documentation. This technology particularly helps reduce administrative tasks that consume valuable clinician time.

Virtual care technologies extend the reach of existing providers, allowing them to serve more patients without increasing staff. Telemedicine usage has increased dramatically across all demographic groups, with 76% of people over age 55 having used telemedicine.

Virtual nursing models enable experienced nurses to support multiple care sites simultaneously, extending their impact beyond a single physical location. These approaches have shown promise in reducing readmissions while maintaining high patient satisfaction rates.

Digital tools can significantly reduce administrative burden, allowing clinical staff to practice at the top of their license. Automation of tasks like medical coding, billing functions, and report writing frees up valuable time for direct patient care. Medical costs are projected to rise globally at an average rate of 10.4% in 2025, highlighting the urgent need for cost-effective solutions like automation.

For healthcare organizations looking to scale digital health effectively, several strategic approaches should be considered. Implementing shared governance by involving clinical staff in decisions about digital tools and workflows can increase buy-in and ensure solutions address actual needs. Using digital tools to optimize labor productivity ensures the right resources are deployed at the right time. Successful digital adoption requires robust change management processes that address workflow disruption.

Organizations should also ensure new digital tools integrate with existing systems to prevent data silos, and set clear metrics for success to track consistently and demonstrate value.

The healthcare industry is witnessing a shift from isolated point solutions toward more integrated digital health platforms. The rebundling of point solutions into comprehensive platforms is expected to be a dominant trend in 2025 and beyond, driven by AI, IoT, interoperability standards, and consumer demand for convenient care options.

Organizations that successfully navigate this digital transformation will be those that align technology strategy with organizational goals, prioritize solutions addressing their most pressing challenges, and implement with a focus on both technical and human factors.

By focusing on care team support, delivering multi-level value, fostering collaborative partnerships, and addressing the complexities of current care delivery models, healthcare organizations can move beyond limited pilots to achieve meaningful scale with their digital health initiatives.