Telehealth, RPM Rose to Prominence During Pandemic, Research Finds | Healthcare Innovation

Digital services, including digital health, is one sector that has experienced newfound importance during COVID-19. To that end, telehealth and remote patient monitoring (RPM) were the top two areas of digital health that have been most positively impacted throughout the pandemic, according to a new survey from market analyst firm Research2Guidance (R2G).

In March 2020, R2G conducted a global survey with members of the digital health community to understand their expectations about how the pandemic would affect the industry. Now, one year later, the firm’s leaders ran the same survey to understand what has changed over the course of a year, collecting the opinions and experiences of 293 industry experts.

The survey sought to answer several key questions, such as: How has the pandemic impacted the digital health industry? Which changes are here to stay? How were digital tools used to manage the pandemic and how are these different than initial expectations?

While digital health was positively impacted in general, this is true for some subsectors more so than others. For the 2021 survey, 73 percent of respondents said telehealth was positively affected by COVID-19, compared to 65 percent of respondents saying so in the 2020 survey. RPM was the second highest subsegment in digital health that respondents said was positively affected by the crisis, with 52 percent saying so, compared to 42 percent in the 2020 survey. Other digital health subsegments that survey respondents noted as being positively affected by the pandemic included digital appointment scheduling (51 percent) and mental health (45 percent).

For telehealth specifically, the impact came in the form of increased acceptance and use for both patients and providers. One survey correspondent claimed his business experienced a “phenomenal” volume of patients interested in remote care, both for monitoring solutions and one time telehealth consultations.

Meanwhile, similarly, to telehealth, RPM has allowed for treatment without face-to-face contact or unnecessary exposure. While the RPM market did not grow in size or revenue, several countries released reimbursement codes to incentivize its use, prompting companies to adjust service offerings, according to the researchers.

What’s more, digital appointment scheduling services has become more relevant. While respondents of the 2020 survey did not see much relevance of this service at the beginning of the pandemic (15 percent), it has grown to be a significant business (51 percent), especially within Europe. Perhaps the pandemic provided a much-needed impulse for this rather basic digital innovation, which was already more commonplace in healthcare systems like the U.S., researchers offered.

Furthermore, while payers and companies were already turning their attention to digital mental health solutions, investments in this area peaked in 2020. An estimated $1.2 billion USD were invested into digital mental health solutions, doubling since 2019. Companies such as Headspace and Lyra Health, offering digital meditation services and employee mental health benefits respectively, each raised millions of dollars and gained new attention in the media, the researchers pointed out.

They thus concluded, “Today, it remains clear that the pandemic will last much longer- and its effects will be much more profound- than was originally anticipated. In the eyes of our respondents and the wider industry, digital health especially experienced growth. As healthcare seekers and providers both sought ways to reduce face-to-face contact, and healthcare gained a new importance for everyone, digital solutions came to the forefront.”