HealthTech’s Call to Action: Views on Revolutionizing Patient Care
The U.S. healthcare system is a complex, sprawling network facing challenges in cost, access, and quality of care.
As HealthTech continues to evolve, innovations are poised to transform patient outcomes, streamline efficiencies, and expand access to care.
We asked thought leaders and experts from the tech community to weigh in on a critical question:
“Innovations in HealthTech are targeting improvements in patient outcomes, efficiency, and access within the vast US healthcare system. In your opinion (professional or personal), which specific area of the US healthcare system urgently requires positive disruption by HealthTech? Why?”
Here’s what they had to say about the urgent need for disruption and the role HealthTech can play in reshaping the future of healthcare.
Read on!
Tech-Enabled Home Care Prevents Senior Readmissions
Here’s my take: the single most urgent opportunity for HealthTech to shake things up in the US system is home-based care for older adults, specifically by preventing avoidable hospital readmissions and ensuring they remain safely independent in their own homes.
Why this matters :-
Patients over 65 account for about one-third of hospital stays and nearly half of readmissions. Often, someone leaves the hospital feeling “better,” only to return a week later because no one managed the loop on medications, follow-up appointments, or basic home safety. The result is higher costs, frustrated families, and older adults losing confidence in their ability to stay at home.
Where HealthTech can step in :-
- Real-time monitoring and proactive alerts. Sensors, wearables, or video tracking can flag changes in gait, heart rate, or routines before a crisis occurs. Instead of reacting to a fall or blood pressure spike, the system notifies a care manager for a telehealth visit or a home check.
2. Seamless care coordination platforms. Discharge paperwork still feels like a stack of paper shoved into a patient’s hands. Digital care plans should update automatically and be shared among hospitals, primary care doctors, home health agencies, and family caregivers. When everyone has the same to-do list—medications, follow-ups, home modifications—nothing slips through the cracks.
3. Family and caregiver engagement tools. Caregivers often feel left in the dark. An app that displays a loved one’s medication schedule, appointments, or a visual “house safety score” shifts the family from worried bystanders to confident partners. When family members are looped in without the hassle of chasing fragmented records, stress drops, adherence improves, and hospital returns decrease.
Why this disrupts the status quo :-
Traditional models treat healthcare as something that happens inside clinics or hospitals. That mindset leaves ninety percent of an older adult’s health invisible: stairs at home, loose rugs, missed doses, loneliness. Technology that extends care into the home demonstrates that we believe you can thrive where you’re most comfortable, not just survive until the next checkup.
In short, HealthTech can and should move the battleground out of hospital corridors and into living rooms. By bridging the gap between discharge instructions and real life, we cut costs and restore dignity and independence for millions of older Americans. That’s a disruption worth making.
Patient Discharge Follow-Through: Healthcare's Critical Gap
The area begging for disruption is patient discharge follow-through. Nobody talks about it, yet it is where outcomes fall apart. You can spend $75,000 stabilizing a trauma patient, only for them to miss a $40 follow-up because no one explained the post-op plan in plain English. It is not sexy. It is not flashy. But it is real. If tech can automate post-discharge education, translate it into 10 languages, send reminders, track medication fills, and flag noncompliance within 48 hours, you cut re-admits and save millions. In fact, that one fix alone would shave at least 20% off avoidable complications across every single hospital category.
All that to say, HealthTech does not need another surgical robot. It needs to get better at making sure people understand what just happened to them and what happens next. That means bridging the information drop-off between bedside and home… without adding five more logins or printing another 30-page packet. If that sounds boring, it is. But so is bleeding out at home because no one followed up after discharge.
Kiara DeWitt, RN, CPN
Founder & CEO, Injectco
Home-Based Elder Care Needs Tech-Driven Solutions
Home-based and long-term care should urgently be addressed as it’s one of the most viable and cost-effective options for elder care today but remains underutilized. There is a growing need for a more sustainable and affordable solution for elder care that goes beyond facility-based care. Many people want to stay in their own homes as they age as that’s where they feel safest and most comfortable.
However, many are pushed toward residential care facilities due to the difficulty of finding affordable, high-quality private care.
HealthTech has the potential to change this and should play a far bigger role in decentralizing care. Putting tools directly in the hands of patients and their families to gain access to vetted, independent caregivers help improve outcomes and over reliance on costly agencies.
James Bowdler
Founder, PrimeCarers
Tech Must Bridge Post-Treatment Gaps in Recovery
If there’s one area in the U.S. healthcare system that’s crying out for disruption by HealthTech, it’s continuity of care in behavioral health—especially after discharge. In addiction treatment, we often pour everything into a 30, 60, or 90-day program. But what happens after that? Too often, people leave treatment and fall through the cracks—because the systems meant to support their long-term recovery are fragmented, outdated, or just not talking to each other.
At Ridgeline Recovery, we’ve seen firsthand how crucial that transition period is. A client might do amazing work in treatment, but if they walk out the door and there’s no tech-enabled support system—no real-time check-ins, no coordinated referrals, no access to digital peer support—the risk of relapse spikes dramatically. We’re not just treating addiction; we’re trying to build a sustainable life. That takes tools, structure, and accountability.
What excites me are platforms that bridge that gap—apps that combine telehealth, medication management, therapist access, and peer support in one place. Even better if they integrate with providers’ EMRs and can “follow” the patient across levels of care. That kind of tech doesn’t just make things more efficient—it saves lives. It keeps people connected, seen, and supported long after they’ve left our walls.
And it’s not just about the patient. It helps us as providers, too. It gives us better insight into what’s working post-treatment, where the drop-offs are, and how we can tighten the net. Right now, too many treatment centers are operating in silos. HealthTech has the potential to weave those silos into a true continuum.
The bottom line? If we want better outcomes in addiction recovery, we need to stop thinking of treatment as an endpoint. We need tech that meets people where they are, long after the paperwork is signed. That’s where the real healing happens.
Preventive Care Models Transform Healthcare's Reactive Approach
One of the most urgent areas in need of positive disruption by HealthTech is preventive and performance-based primary care—specifically focused on longevity, healthspan, and early risk identification. The current U.S. healthcare system is largely reactive, treating disease after it emerges rather than optimizing for long-term health and resilience. Through my work with elite athletes, the NBA, the USTA, and later as VP of Health & Human Performance at Canyon Ranch, I’ve seen the power of data-driven, proactive care models that use continuous monitoring, biomarker analysis, and personalized health protocols to prevent decline before it starts.
We need HealthTech tools that make this level of care accessible to everyone—not just elite performers. Platforms that integrate diagnostics, behavior change, and real-time feedback can empower individuals to make better health decisions earlier. This shift from “sick care” to “performance care” has the potential to dramatically reduce chronic disease burden, increase vitality across the lifespan, and improve both patient outcomes and system-wide costs.
Healthcare Cost Transparency Ripe for Tech Innovation
Access to healthcare in the US is too often hampered by lack of clarity in the cost of services. The result is an inability for consumers to properly weigh their options from both a medical and financial perspective. With petabyte scale data now accessible through public data sources mandated by the Transparency in Coverage regulation, this area of US healthcare is ripe for tech innovation, and has the potential to be a major driver of improved patient experience in healthcare.
Greg Mottet
Founder, Vairate
Integrated Patient Data: Foundation for Coordinated Care
A critical area in urgent need of HealthTech disruption is integrated patient data. Today, vast amounts of patient information remain locked in paper case files, scanned PDFs, or siloed systems. This fragmentation limits visibility across the care continuum, leading to misdiagnoses, treatment delays, and redundant procedures. Digitizing this data using AI-powered OCR, NLP, and structured extraction tools is no longer optional—it’s foundational.
Beyond digitization, this data must be validated against historical and prospective care plans and securely shared across providers. Interoperability frameworks and smart data-matching algorithms can help build longitudinal patient records that adapt over time. Such an ecosystem would enable real-time decision support, reduce clinical errors, and empower more coordinated, patient-centric care—especially vital for those with chronic or complex conditions.
Prashant Kondle
Technology Innovator, Ivis Technologies
Care Coordination: Key to Fixing Healthcare Fragmentation
From a strategic and operational lens, the area within US healthcare most urgently in need of HealthTech disruption is care coordination across fragmented providers. This is not a theoretical concern – it comes up repeatedly in my consulting work with health systems and insurance partners struggling to manage patient journeys that cross multiple specialists, facilities, and technologies.
In the US, a patient with a chronic condition often deals with a maze of disconnected systems, inconsistent data, and duplicated efforts. This fragmentation is the root cause of both inefficiency and poor outcomes. Clinicians waste time reconciling incomplete records, while patients repeat the same tests or get conflicting advice. For business leaders in healthcare, this translates directly into lost revenue, unnecessary costs, and frustrated patients who are less likely to engage or adhere to care plans.
Technology is already proving its value in other sectors by integrating data and streamlining processes, yet healthcare lags due to regulatory complexity and legacy infrastructure. But the demand for better coordination is growing. In my role at ECDMA, I have seen companies outside healthcare – especially in e-commerce and omnichannel retail – drive dramatic gains through unified platforms. When applied thoughtfully to healthcare, these principles can yield similar benefits: connected records, real-time updates between providers, and a single point of truth for each patient.
It is not about launching more apps or collecting more data. The urgency is to create interoperable systems that actually fit into clinicians’ workflows, minimize administrative drag, and empower teams to spend more time on patient care. In consulting projects, I have advised on tech integrations that reduce appointment no-shows and close gaps in follow-up care by automating reminders or surfacing actionable insights to care teams. These practical, business-focused solutions do not just improve outcomes – they also make the economics of healthcare more sustainable.
The US healthcare system is massive and complex, but the principle is universal: patients need seamless, coordinated care, and providers need systems that work together, not in silos. HealthTech innovators who focus on this challenge are the ones making a real impact, both for outcomes and for the bottom line. That is where I see both the greatest need and the greatest opportunity for sustainable, positive disruption.
AI Can Slash Healthcare's Administrative Waste
The biggest opportunity I see for disruption in the US healthcare system is administrative inefficiency. Administrative costs in the United States are about 15% to 30% of total healthcare spending, disproportionately high compared to other countries. This is partially due to cumbersome billing and insurance claims and regulatory compliance bureaucracies, which add significant cost and minimize focus on patients.
HealthTech advances, namely those employing artificial intelligence (AI) to automate billing and claims processing, blockchain to improve the security and interoperability of health records, and machine learning in predictive analytics, can help automate these administrative processes. For example, deploying AI in administrative tasks might be able to limit how long doctors need to spend documenting, which comes to 2.6 hours per week per physician reporting for four external quality measures.
The implementation of these strategies enables healthcare providers to repurpose overhead toward direct patient care without compromising efficiency and patient outcomes. It seems that the reduction of administrative costs can bring in huge savings: for instance, if 10% of administrative spending is saved, it would be about $320 billion per year. HealthTech has an opportunity to make a big difference in the functioning of the US healthcare system by directing our collective efforts toward reducing administrative waste.
Rob Dillan
Founder, EVhype.com
Democratization, Addressing Inefficiencies, and Reducing Wait Times
The most important region for HealthTech innovation is the development of the accessibility to healthcare and reducing the variations in the quality of care across populations. For all the money the United States has invested in health care, by the way, the American system remains miserly in a way that does keep a lot of people from receiving decent care when they need it.
HealthTech offerings would do well to concentrate on democratising the delivery of healthcare with teleconsultation platforms, AI diagnostics for under-served areas and modular systems that allow ongoing care between various care providers. These efforts can eliminate geographical barriers and offer flexible care for some of the hardest-to-reach communities.
The inefficiencies in American healthcare due to its fragmented nature, daunting insurance routines and piles of administrative tasks, can be solved through technology. Integrated systems between disparate healthcare silos, automated approval mechanisms, smart population health management, can also reduce costs and improve overall patient care.
Special focus should be on subspecialty areas where patients are typically forced to wait for months with no other recourse. A lot can be achieved through advancements in supply chain management and care coordination that are technology-led, which can dramatically reduce wait times and enhance the availability of care. These improved capabilities will result in improved public health and more efficient and cost-effective healthcare systems.
Supratim Sircar
Software Engineer, Cisco
On behalf of the Techronicler community of readers, we thank these leaders and experts for taking the time to share valuable insights that stem from years of experience and in-depth expertise in their respective niches.
If you wish to showcase your experience and expertise, participate in industry-leading discussions, and add visibility and impact to your personal brand and business, get in touch with the Techronicler team to feature in our fast-growing publication.
