Digital Health Took Off. How to Keep it Flying

Tom Leary, M.A., senior vice president and head of government relations at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS), says that in the months before the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, many health information technology (IT) firms were pessimistic about the near-term prospects for telehealth. “Several of our members were talking about either pulling back on telehealth or not launching remote patient monitoring efforts,” he says. Once COVID-19 started spreading, doubt and misgivings receded almost as fast. Telehealth increased 10- to 12-fold during the first year of the pandemic and into 2021, notes Leary.