Throughout the past year, the healthcare and life science industries experienced a proliferation of digital health innovation that challenged traditional notions of healthcare delivery and payment, as well as product research, development and commercialization, for long-standing and new stakeholders alike. Lawmakers and regulators made meaningful progress towards modernizing the existing legal framework to both protect patients and consumers and encourage continued innovation, but these efforts still lag behind the pace of digital health innovation. As a result, some obstacles, misalignment and ambiguity remain, and 2020 will likely be another year of significant legal and regulatory change.
Read on for a review of key developments that shaped digital health in 2019 and set the groundwork for trends in 2020.