Digital Health IPOs Are Back, But Are They Just More Band-Aids on a Broken System?
Another day, another tech IPO, but this time, it’s digital health stepping back into the spotlight after a bit of a dry spell. On the surface, this looks like progress. The digital health market is alive, innovation is being funded, and companies are developing solutions that address real healthcare needs. That’s a win, right?
Well, kind of.
Hinge Health’s upcoming public debut is just the latest in a wave of digital health companies cashing in on investor interest. Over the last two years, we’ve seen IPOs from Nuvo (remote fetal monitoring), Waystar (revenue cycle management), Tempus AI (precision medicine), CeriBell (AI-powered brain monitoring), and Metsera Inc. (obesity drugs).
Because while these companies are doing valuable work, they’re not solving the problem, the big ole elephant in the room, the deep-rooted fragmentation that forces patients to cobble together their own healthcare experience.
TL;DR
The Data:
Digital health IPOs are making a comeback
Interoperability remains a massive roadblock
Employer-driven solutions are growing
Data is money, and healthcare giants are hoarding it
Key Examples:
Hinge Health IPO vs. the bigger picture – While their digital MSK care model is valuable, it’s still a standalone solution in a system that desperately needs integration.
Employer-led health platforms – Businesses are increasingly stepping into healthcare, but without interoperability, these solutions become another app, another login, another silo.
Blockchain, FHIR, and tech-driven fixes – Solutions exist to unify healthcare data, but adoption is slow, and incentives aren’t aligned to push them forward.
Melissa Insights:
"I’m all for employer-driven solutions. But if they don’t connect to the broader healthcare ecosystem, they’re just adding to the problem. True patient empowerment comes from integration, not isolation. Until we break down the data silos, patients will keep playing project manager for their own health, while payors and EHR vendors cash in on the dysfunction."
The Takeaway / Action:
To truly fix healthcare fragmentation, we need to:
Stop celebrating standalone solutions – True impact comes from connection, not just innovation.
Prioritize interoperability as a financial imperative – Make it profitable to integrate, rather than hoard data.
Push for regulatory shifts that promote open healthcare ecosystems – We need policies that force EHR vendors to work together, not against each other.
Design employer-led health benefits that actually integrate – Employers have power, but only if they demand real interoperability.
More digital health IPOs are coming. The question is: will they actually fix anything, or are we just funding more fragmented tools?
The Harsh Reality: Patients Are Still Doing All the Work
Healthcare isn’t a collection of cool, well-funded point solutions. But that’s how it’s being built. Each of these IPO-bound companies may be addressing a specific pain point, but at the end of the day, patients still have to navigate multiple platforms, systems, and apps, none of which talk to each other in any meaningful way.
EHRs are still walled gardens that make interoperability feel like an afterthought.
Employer-driven solutions (like Hinge Health) don’t integrate with a patient’s full care journey.
Patients are left juggling apps, logins, and portals, desperately trying to piece together a cohesive picture of their health.
In theory, digital health should be making life easier. In practice, it’s making healthcare feel like an ever-expanding to-do list. I’m all for employer-driven solutions, after all, giving employees better access to healthcare through innovative digital platforms is a step in the right direction. But without interoperability, these solutions are just another layer of fragmentation in an already disconnected system. In my piece on Patient Empowerment vs. Patient Engagement, I called out the fact that true empowerment comes from giving patients control over their health data, not just offering them another app to navigate. If employer-driven solutions can’t integrate seamlessly with a patient’s broader healthcare journey, including EHRs, primary care providers, and other health services, they’re just creating more digital walled gardens. We need a model where these platforms don’t just coexist, but actually connect, allowing employees to engage with their health in a meaningful, streamlined way rather than acting as the middleman in their own care.
Standalone Digital Health Companies: What’s the Endgame?
With all these IPOs, a bigger question looms: What are these companies actually aiming for? Are they looking to be absorbed by a larger healthcare system or consumer-facing brand like Amazon? Are they trying to go it alone in a landscape that rewards scale over independence?
Because when it comes down to brass tacks, standalone digital health companies aren’t a holistic solution. They’re just another thing for consumers to manage. And as long as these companies remain isolated offerings rather than interconnected solutions, they aren’t truly fixing healthcare.
EHR Interoperability: The Elephant That Won’t Leave the Room
Let’s talk about EHRs for a second. Because no matter how many digital health companies go public, if they can’t integrate seamlessly with existing health records, they’ll always be adding complexity instead of solving it.
What’s Keeping Interoperability Stuck in the Dark Ages?
Lack of Standardization – EHRs don’t follow a universal data format, making cross-platform sharing a nightmare.
Legacy Infrastructure – Hospitals and health systems are still operating on outdated tech that doesn’t play well with modern solutions.
Privacy & Compliance Hurdles – HIPAA and other regulations (while necessary) create additional barriers for seamless data sharing.
Business Incentives – Some EHR vendors don’t want open access because it threatens their control over the data.
Data is Money, and Gatekeeping Protects Profits – Large EHR companies aren’t just slow to embrace interoperability, they’re actively resisting it. Patient data is a goldmine, and by keeping it locked within their own ecosystems, these vendors can charge providers, payors, and digital health companies a premium for access. True interoperability threatens that business model, so instead of creating seamless integrations, many EHRs impose fees, restrictions, and technical hurdles that maintain their dominance.
It’s not just about inefficiencies or outdated tech or layering more tech on top of a broken foundation, it’s about control. Until we address the financial motivations behind data gatekeeping, interoperability will remain more of a warm and fuzzy buzzword than a reality.
So, Who’s Actually Trying to Solve This?
If digital health IPOs alone won’t fix interoperability, what will? A few potential solutions are on the table:
FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) – A framework designed to standardize how healthcare data is exchanged. It’s gaining traction, but adoption is painfully slow.
Blockchain for Health Records – Decentralized and secure, blockchain could make data-sharing seamless while maintaining privacy. But will health systems actually embrace it? Most move at a glacial pace and tend to fear anything new outside of bioscience, medical devices, pharmacological solutions, diagnostics, and treatment. (I mean, it took aggressive government intervention just to push systems from paper to electronic records! The idea that they’ll suddenly welcome blockchain with open arms? Unlikely.)
Consumer-Driven Data Aggregators – Apple and Google have made moves to centralize health data across platforms, but their reach is still limited. And with the growing concerns around data privacy, trust in Big Tech to handle sensitive health data isn’t exactly soaring—especially under the current administration.
And then there’s Palantir, which has made a play for interoperability with its AI-driven data integration platform. But let’s be honest, Palantir’s name alone raises privacy concerns, and trust is a huge barrier in healthcare.
At the end of the day, all of these solutions are promising, but none of them are scaling fast enough to disrupt the entrenched power dynamics in healthcare. Until there’s a real financial incentive for interoperability, we’re going to keep seeing more of the same: siloed data, walled gardens, and patients left to piece together their own healthcare puzzle.
The Unwillingness to Change: Bureaucracy, Payors, and Old-School Thinking
Technology isn’t the only thing standing in the way. There’s also an entire ecosystem of stakeholders who benefit from the status quo.
Regulators move at a glacial pace, making widespread interoperability efforts painfully slow.
Payors (insurance companies, other intermediaries) prioritize their own systems, making cross-platform collaboration a challenge.
Healthcare institutions resist change because new systems require training, investment, and the risk of disrupting existing workflows.
What’s the Endgame?
Here’s the bottom line: Healthcare doesn’t need more solutions. It needs connection.
Until digital health companies, EHR vendors, payors, and regulators actually work together to create a truly interoperable, patient-centered ecosystem, all we’re doing is adding more isolated tools to an already fragmented system.
So, who’s going to step up and build the actual solution patients need? And how long are we going to celebrate IPOs that only add to the noise instead of fixing the root problem?