After the website, 29% call their insurer, 27% review the information their insurer provided, and only 16% use their health insurer’s mobile app for guidance. According to Forrester’s ConsumerVoices Market Research Online Community Survey, November 2025, most consumers use their insurer’s digital offerings less than monthly (61%). The good news? More than half (57%) indicate they want to use their health insurer’s digital offerings.

Leverage the digital front door to further the patient relationship. Highmark Health is using its digital front door as a way to understand the member’s needs holistically and guide them through their individualized health journeys by turning data into insights to connect them with recommended programs, like health coaching, virtual and digital health, and other relevant programs.

A recent study based on the National Poll on Healthy Aging found that 81% of older adults used digital health technologies like patient portals (65%), telehealth (49%), or mobile health apps (44%). Tap into the digital savvy of seniors to improve confidence in care and drive plan performance. Prove performance improvement with longitudinal health data. The digital health landscape is flooded with options, and not all are created equal.

When digital health channels are treated as revenue-generating businesses, HPO digital leaders become accountable not just for experience but also for how digital drives demand, steers utilization, and reduces avoidable cost. This means measuring digital performance against hard outcomes, such as appointment capture, referral leakage, labor substitution, and downstream utilization, not vague metrics like clicks or downloads.

Excerpt from the transcript: We know that health systems, health plans, and many others are facing a financial strain. And so they continue to have their budgets get crunched, even on digital. So the worst thing you can do is spend money in the wrong areas or on the wrong things. We're in this amazing age, as I mentioned, where we have emerging tech that continues to gain traction, generating new data, new insights, and we get really excited about the what we can do with it.

How To Integrate Continuous Digital-First Strategies For Sustained Engagement

Figure 2 Set A Clear Vision, And Consistently Apply The Forrester IHO Framework Digital leaders in healthcare are uniquely positioned to transform their organizations into IHOs by leveraging key technology to modernize systems and by fostering strategic innovation. Before investing in new technologies, or evaluating existing tools and vendor relationships, digital health leaders must start by clearly defining a vision for what becoming an IHO means for their organization.

Some of them, such as digital health tools, have even crept into physicians’ homes. As a result, clinicians are hesitant to adopt new technology (see Figure 1). Opaque leadership degrades trust. When leaders’ distribution of resources competes with core values and commitments of the clinical workforce, the workforce feels betrayed and morally injured.

In 2025, the healthcare industry experienced significant shake-ups, including the fracturing of vaccine policy and rapid innovations in digital health, all against a backdrop of eroding trust and customer experience. In 2026, we see persistent headwinds in the form of volatile policy changes, deteriorating access to care, and unchecked AI risks. Find out more in our 2026 healthcare predictions.

Buoy Health, a digital health tool, intentionally added friction at the start of patients’ journeys by asking them to fill in a symptom checker questionnaire to help the company understand their symptoms, recommend next steps, and advise on the best financial options. The rate of patients’ uncertainty about their health concerns dropped from 34% to 21% after using the technology. Consider latent sources of value for business.