For startups and investors aiming to bring health technology to underserved populations, evidence of impact should be everything: It’s what shows employers and payers a new offering is worth paying for, and what can help convince patients to give it a try.
But while the market is crowded with companies claiming their products meaningfully improve health — especially for underserved groups — there is still no industry-wide standard slate of metrics to fully evaluate them. Some are reporting how many new appointments they’ve created among lower income or underrepresented populations; others are coming up with new ways to approximate how their app or wearable specifically helped rural and urban patients with chronic conditions, for instance.
“It’s a really big problem,” said Alex Lennox-Miller, a health care analyst with venture research firm CB Insights. “So much of the future of health systems is to be in care that’s happening outside of appointments — as we’re talking about patient engagement, as we’re talking about remote monitoring, as we’re talking about home care, those are the places we have the worst ways to measure and the least visibility into their impact.”
