Today’s Top Digital Health Trends Revealed During HITLAB 2021 Innovator’s Summit

Earlier this month, health leaders from across various disciplines joined together along with thousands of attendees at HITLAB’s 8th annual Innovator’s Summit, which was held virtually over the course of three days. The event, which drew participants from around the world, featured a packed agenda complete with keynote sessions, panel discussions, fireside chats, innovator showcases and breakout rooms.  

“We were thrilled to have people from around the world at this year’s Innovator’s Summit. During the three-day event, we had experts presenting on wide ranging and comprehensive topics including evidence and new tools, technologies and terminologies related to how people are implementing and utilizing digital health,” said Stan Kachnowski, Chair of HITLAB and Director, Columbia Business School, Digital Health Program. “We also delved into the important topic of diversity and inclusion in healthcare as well as the social determinants of health and the programs and solutions being put into place to address these issues.”

This year’s Summit titled “The Economics of Digital Health in the New Normal,” opened with a tribute to Glen De Vries, CEO of Medidata and screening of his last lecture at Columbia Business School. Other presentations included keynote addresses from Bill Taranto of Merck Global Health Innovation Fund on The Future of Digital Health in 2022 and from Leadership and Digital Health expert, Donato Tramuto on Compassionate Leadership. 

The event also boasted distinguished speakers from other leading organizations such as the United Nations, US Department Health and Human Services, Amazon Web Services, GSK, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and others who all shared their insight on key topics impacting healthcare and shed light on some of the latest trends. 

Some of the key topics/trends highlighted during the event include:

• Rising demand for women-specific health solutions paves the way for a new crop of FemTech innovators 
• Digital health bolstering health access and equity 
• Telemedicine use in managing chronic care/chronic disease 
• Digital therapeutics particularly related to mental health
• Social determinants of health are becoming top priority 
• Remote monitoring of everything
• Real World Data (RWE) is king
• Patient centered models gaining traction 
• VR and AR in healthcare and health policy 
• Digitization of pharma a must for improved profitability, quality and overall industry progress 
• The benefit of moving to the cloud in healthcare 

During the course of the three days, innovators from around the world presented their solutions and addressed how they are being implemented and adopted in order to fill unmet needs in healthcare.

The presentations are all available on demand here.

Thank you to our generous sponsors TAMP, Information Mediary Corp. (IMC), Moses and Singer LLP, Bloqcube, Plug and Play, Goodwin and Self Help: Virtual Senior Center (VSC)

About HITLAB Seminar Series

HITLAB’s Seminar Series bridges the gap between academic and professional healthcare. Our series serves as an outlet to facilitate connections and provide networking and growth opportunities for digital health professionals.

Since 2007, our Seminar Series has brought together leading experts – including scientists, physicians, IT architects, public health practitioners, and investors – who share a single vision: to design and scale innovative technologies that improve health outcomes around the world.