🔮 2025 Digital Health Predictions and Reflections on 2024's Hits & Misses

2024 was the year of "AI tourists" in healthcare. Will 2025 finally bring innovation in digital health?

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No one knows sh*t. We pretend we do, but we’re all horrible forecasters. Still, talking about healthcare issues matters.

🎉🥳🥂🎇🎊 Happy New Year! 🍾🎆🌟✨🍸

2024 is almost behind us 😔, and you know what that means—it’s time for 2024 wrap-ups and 2025 predictions. 😉

But first, in my final post of 2024, I want to give a special shoutout to the Founding Members of AI Health Uncut. I’m truly grateful for these genuine supporters of my work. These individuals go above and beyond to ensure that this critical mission to improve healthcare with technology continues. Their support not only keeps this initiative alive but also helps subsidize access for those less fortunate—students, the unemployed, and others who might not otherwise afford a paid subscription. Thank you for your unwavering support, my dear Founding Members!

To become a Founding Member, please click here.

Anyway, by now, you’ve probably noticed an avalanche of “experts” sharing their takes on 2025. Why? Exposure. Everyone wants attention. So, I figured, what the heck? Why not join in? Maybe I’m in desperate need of attention too. 😉

Every year, the same buzzwords get recycled: “consolidation,” “integration,” “M&A.” But here’s the reality—most of these so-called experts have no clue what’s going on. Spoiler: neither does anyone else.

Even when a prediction eventually comes true, the timing is impossible to nail. Of course, when it does, you’ll hear a smug “I told you so.” I guarantee it. 😊 I wrote about this phenomenon in my recent article, “AI Has Failed Radiologists: Why Do Humans Believe Bad Predictions?”

Here’s the truth:

Outside of drug discovery and genetics, 2024 was a lost year for digital health.

A bummer, I know. But don’t despair. It’s time to pull ourselves together, roll up our sleeves, and make 2025 an exceptional year for digital health.

And on that note, I’ve got 7 fresh predictions for 2025. Let’s see how they stack up against the 8 predictions I made for 2024.

2024 Predictions: What Came True and What Missed the Mark?

Here’s how my 2024 digital health predictions, made on January 1, 2024, have played out:

✅ “Digital health failures are expected to persist” - WAS TRUE

Not exactly Nostradamus-level foresight, but 2024 will be remembered as the year digital health imploded. Failures, bankruptcies, delistings, and fraud piled up like a James Bond plot—if James Bond moonlighted in forensic accounting:

• Outcome Health founders received prison sentences for their audacious $1B accounting fraud.

• The former CEO of SCWorx Corp was convicted of securities fraud tied to bogus COVID tests.

• Pieces Technologies faced a landmark lawsuit for wildly overstated claims about its health AI model’s accuracy.

• UnitedHealth found itself embroiled in a $50B Medicare upcoding fraud scandal.

• Truepill became a cautionary tale, reportedly extorted by Optum Ventures (backed by—you guessed it—UnitedHealth).

• Walmart chalked up its fourth primary care failure in a decade, proving retail domination doesn’t always equal healthcare innovation.

• 9 major bankruptcies and delistings hit public digital health companies and so-called “unicorns”—those $1B+ valuation darlings—hard.

And that’s just the highlight reel. The carnage was spectacular, and the cleanup is going to take years.

✅ “The trend of “tech parasites” and tech copycats will continue as seen in 2023” - WAS SO TRUE

Has it ever? 2024 will go down in the annals of healthcare history as the year of AI tourists.

As I was, unfortunately, reporting this year, in digital health, “storytelling” (for wooing VC funding) has been glorified, while true innovation got kicked to the curb. That’s why healthcare is swimming in 💩.

Some of these “groundbreaking” healthcare AI companies we all know and love are just buying frozen pizza from the supermarket (aka API’ing into OpenAI and foundational model providers), then serving it to you as gourmet pizza—repackaged, with a shiny front end, while never admitting the tech isn’t really theirs.

But the most disgusting part is that venture capitalists know these AI liars for what they are but still pour hundreds of millions into them, hyping them as the next best thing since sliced bread.

This is digital health today, in a nutshell.

Transparency is everything—for customers, investors, and the medical community alike. If you’re using someone else’s voice recognition technology or AI model, own it. Don’t label yourself an “AI-powered voice assistant” if you’re neither an AI nor a voice company.

Plagiarism and “AI tourism” in healthcare must stop.

✅ “Venture capital in the digital health sector to continue facing significant losses in 2024” - WAS SO TRUE

Has it ever?

Here’s a snapshot of net earnings losses for U.S. publicly traded digital health companies funded by venture capital, private equity, or institutional investors:

2024 (as of Q3): -$14.2B

2023: -$13.6B

2022: -$25.1B

2021: -$13.0B

2020: -$4.8B

That’s -$70.8B in red ink over 5 years!

Venture capital isn’t funding innovation in American healthcare—it’s draining it.

✅ “Significant product consolidation in the digital health industry” - WAS TRUE

In 2024, the digital health industry witnessed 13 high-profile acquisitions and mergers among publicly traded companies and unicorns, totaling a $19.1B. Leading the charge was R1 RCM, a bootstrapped company acquired for $8.9B on November 19, 2024—an eye-popping $7.7B premium over its IPO valuation of $1.2B.

❌ The current hype surrounding LLMs will subside, paving the way for truly revolutionary inventions that rely on elegant math rather than brute force - FALSE

Boy, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Not only has the LLM frenzy refused to subside, but it’s also spawned an entire industry of AI tourists in healthcare. Case in point: 126 AI medical scribe apps. 126! Let’s be real—how many of these are actual innovators, and how many are just repackaging or outright stealing someone else’s tech?

My estimate: 4 innovators, 122 knockoffs. It’s a total embarrassment for the healthcare industry.

😐 “2024 will be the year of blockchain” - KINDA

If not blockchain itself, 2024 has certainly been the year of bitcoin (BTC), skyrocketing 121% from $42,265.19 on 12/31/2023 to its current $93,541.96, peaking at $108,268.45. This surge has been fueled by optimism around deregulation and decentralization tied to the upcoming Trump administration. (Naturally, bitcoin remains the poster child for blockchain technology, for better or for worse.)

I remain optimistic about blockchain’s potential in healthcare.

The healthcare industry desperately needs efficiency, transparency, accountability, security, and decentralization—the five qualities currently only enabled by blockchain.

Interestingly, it’s the European Union (EU) that’s leading the charge on blockchain applications, including in healthcare. A notable example is the EU’s recent efforts under The Data Act, which introduces standardized contractual terms for data sharing. This could mark the first step toward decentralized contracting, potentially influencing U.S. healthcare as well. (Sources: European Commission, Umbereen S. Nehal, MD, MPH, MBA on LinkedIn.)

❌ “EHR companies are set to embark on a massive acquisition spree in 2024” - WAS FALSE

Yeah, right. That was wishful thinking. The EHR oligopolies have perfected the art of inertia. Why change or innovate when doing nothing guarantees they maintain their market dominance? Every move they make—every press release about “partnerships” or “initiatives”—is just carefully crafted smoke and mirrors to sustain the status quo.

Case in point: Out of 13 digital health acquisitions in 2024, only one even loosely qualifies as an EHR-related deal. Commure’s purchase of AI scribe company Augmedix in July 2024 might count, given Commure’s market position as an interoperability platform.

✅ “There is no genuine innovation in digital health” - WAS TRUE

My additional 8th prediction (more like an observation) was that, outside of genetics and biotech, there is absolutely no innovation in digital health.

2024 was the year of AI tourists in healthcare—the “tech parasites” who latch onto someone else’s inventions, repackage them, and parade them as their own.

As I mentioned above, we now have 126 AI scrub apps in healthcare. Out of those, I can count maybe 4 that actually use genuine, “built from scratch” technology.

It’s an absolute disgrace to our industry.

Anyway, 5 out of 8—not bad, right?

To sum up: while most of my predictions were spot on, I was overly optimistic in a few areas last year (and the year before that). Unfortunately, American healthcare has once again failed to meet even my modest expectations.

2025 Digital Health Predictions

Here are my 7 bold predictions for digital health in 2025: