Mike McSherry, CEO
If the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference is any indication, healthcare is in for one heck of a year. Sunny skies continued through the conference, helping with the Uber and Lyft (increasingly Waymo!) lines, and contrasting the added security and somber beginning of the industry’s first dedicated event of the year where payors were notably absent or security chaperoned.
Here are some of the “hot takes” we came away with from the event and in the week that has followed.
Increase in M&A Activity
After experiencing incredible valuation highs during the pandemic, digital health and biotech have been in a holding pattern for more than a year. Valuations for these companies have mostly level set, making M&A a more attractive option according to the investment banking/corp dev type folks. JPM kicked off with several deals, including Johnson & Johnson stating it was buying Intra-Cellular Therapies for $14.6 billion, the largest biotech M&A deal since late 2023, Eli Lilly purchasing Scorpion Therapeutics and Health Catalyst announcing it will acquire Upfront Healthcare Services. This year is off to an active start, and we expect to see more deals as the year progresses.
Remote Patient Monitoring Market Evolving
As with most new industries, numerous companies came out with RPM solutions addressing a whole host of medical concerns – many integrated into our digital health platform with great results. The RPM market is maturing and health systems lack the resources to roll out multiple tech-enabled programs or manage a plethora of vendors. The introduction of both RTM (Remote Therapeutic Monitoring) combined with existing RPM (Remote Patient Monitoring) has slightly alleviated the reimbursement headwinds that have long held back broader provider adoption of these services.
Health systems are looking for a bigger, broader set of solutions versus the point solutions we have seen. There has been a move away from point solutions and in favor of platform approaches. RPM vendors are going to materially change to offer bigger, broader solutions, causing RPM companies to merge, go out of business or add care services to their technology offering. We have seen several of our partners add complimentary services with more on the horizon. These factors are contributing to market consolidation and we expect to see more of this as 2025 progresses.
The Trump Factor
Conversations would not have been complete without some early thoughts on what President Trump’s second term will mean for healthcare. Several executive orders have already caught our attention, including withdrawing from the WHO, placing a health agency communications hold, the FDA scrubbing clinical trial diversity material from its website, freezing NIH grant reviews, and more.
While his first few days in office have been a flurry of activity few expected, one JPM attendee noted that healthcare is incredibly difficult and will take significant stamina and long-term focus to address the minutia of policy changes and the resulting economic impacts. More likely, we will not see broad, widespread disruption, but rather more targeted initiatives. These observations may be premature and we will know more in the coming weeks, as many of us head to ViVE.
Waymo & AI
I spoke to several people who took their first Waymo rides. As this autonomous driving service is only available in a few cities, widespread awareness and access led to several ‘firsts.’ This perhaps portends the broader awareness and adoption, with surprisingly pleasant experiences, of AI services within healthcare. When technology such as AI is considered vague, theoretical and unapproachable…we’re reminded how a tactile experience can almost immediately change perception and acceptance. Long live healthcare AI advances!
Send us a note if you will be at ViVE, to be held February 16-19 in Nashville. We would love to meet you there!