Healthcare innovation at the turn of 2025: Plotting hot topics along our innovation maturity curve

As 2024 draws to a close, the healthcare innovation ecosystem is buzzing with reflections on this year’s biggest topics—and predictions for what’s to come. Last year, we introduced the Rock Health Innovation Maturity Curve, a framework to compare hot topics in digital health based on their research, investment, and partnership activity. From early-stage buzz to market-dominating developments, we mapped where trends stood to help strategy and innovation leaders spot first-mover opportunities and gauge where competitive pressures are ramping up. We’d like to check in on where things landed and add a few more buzzy topics for assessment.

Since last December, many of the topics we covered made significant progress up the maturity curve. This year, we revisit three major topics—healthcare AI, digital obesity care, and food as medicine—to plot their movements and consider what lies ahead in 2025. We also plot three new topics: next-generation wearable form factors, patient phenotyping and digital twins, and climate health innovation. To start, we’ll reintroduce the Rock Health Innovation Maturity Curve and then dive into how each of these topics are faring.

Rock Health’s Innovation Maturity Curve

Because healthcare innovation is a dynamic and rapidly evolving field, predictions can sometimes feel like a “finger in the wind.” To take a consistent and data-driven approach, we developed the Rock Health Innovation Maturity Curve to track emerging trends.

To plot topics on the Innovation Maturity Curve, we look at three major data categories:

Research publication volume: Gauges the scientific and early-market potential of a topic through PubMed publication trends. High research activity signals nascent innovation
Venture funding: Tracks investor interest using deal count and funding totals from the Rock Health Digital Health Venture Funding Database. Investment activity is a leading indicator of commercial interest and level of maturity
Partnership activity: Uses industry partnerships from the Rock Health Digital Health Partnership Database as a proxy for commercial traction. High partnership volume and momentum point to maturing developments

We tally a topic’s year-to-date activity¹ across these three categories to gauge its popularity, and also calculate the growth rate of these metrics over the past two years to understand its momentum. We use a weighted average of these two calculations to determine if a topic is nascent, emerging, developing, calibrating, or mature.

2023’s hot topics: Progress in 2024

AI in healthcare
Developing (2023–2024)
Anyone reading digital health headlines knows that we’re still in the thick of healthcare AI’s hype moment: AI-enabled digital health startups attracted $3.3B in venture funding from January to October 2024, making up a whopping 36% of overall funding. 2024 was also the year that big healthcare organizations put AI to use. AI partnerships between healthcare players were off the charts, with 80+ partnerships in 2024 alone. While startup funding and partnership activity surged, 2024 saw AI research activity plateau, another signal that we’re transitioning to practical applications and commercialization.

What comes next: The healthcare AI market is entering a big phase of consolidation, with fierce competition in categories like AI scribes—and winners are being crowned based on their ability to secure major accounts. Big Tech players are inking their own healthcare AI partnerships while enterprise software juggernauts like Epic are doubling down on AI applications, making it hard for point-solution startups to compete. Moving into 2025, AI enablement will become table stakes across solutions rather than a core differentiator, and we’re likely to see a more concentrated group of leaders control the LLM landscape.

Digital obesity care
Nascent (2023) → Developing (2024)
GLP-1s have changed the weight care conversation, and they’ve contributed to the rise of digital platforms to help patients access medication and/or support them during treatment. In 2024, digital obesity care startups raised $664M, propelling obesity care to become the third-most-funded clinical indication through October 2024. We also saw drug manufacturers and compounded medication prescribers compete to help patients access weight loss drugs.

What comes next: As expected in a developing market, increased competition among obesity care startups is underscoring the need for differentiation. Some startups are doubling down on getting consumers fast, direct access to GLP-1s, though this approach depends on how (or if) the incoming administration chooses to address the GLP-1 shortage and regulate compounding pharmacies and prescribers. With drug supply and access still in flux, momentum is strong for obesity players that offer more than just prescribing—pushing forward precision treatment planning, biometric tracking, support for co-occurring conditions like PCOS, and medication off-ramps. Expect this space to mature further as formidable buyers like health plans and employers scrutinize the efficacy and long-term success of digital obesity programs.

The future of obesity care will be greatly influenced by consumers’ priorities and preferences. Dive into consumers’ weight care perspectives with the 2024 Rock Health Weight Care Experience Survey Series

Food as medicine (FaM)
Nascent (2023) → Emerging (2024)
Food as medicine (FaM) moved from niche term to buzzword in 2024, fueled by startup raises and moves from D2C companies, delivery players, and even the White House. Funding for digital FaM startups nearly doubled between 2023 and 2024,² with companies like Foodsmart ($200M raised in June)³ leading the charge. Health plans, providers, and grocers contributed to 30+ FaM-related partnerships this year.

What comes next: FaM innovation success is closely tied to payment models for food delivery and nutrition consultations. 2024 was a big year for FaM expansion within Medicare Advantage and Medicaid programs, as waivers and supplemental benefits incentivized activity. The future of FaM hinges on sustained policy support and the ability to demonstrate measurable impact on outcomes. If Medicaid, Medicare, and MA plans continue to prioritize FaM initiatives—potentially under a “Make America Healthy Again” charge—it could propel the category from emerging to developing status in 2025 and beyond.

Want to talk about how the rest of 2023’s Innovation Curve topics—caregiver solutions, value-based care enablement, retailers as providers, and data interoperability—progressed? Reach out to Rock Health Advisory to connect about these trajectories and other trending topics

Mapping new innovation areas

We have our ear to the ground with enterprise players, startups, and investors, and are always keeping tabs on what’s gaining traction. Here are some topics that gained momentum across 2024, where they fall currently, and what could be on the horizon.

Next-generation wearable form factors
Emerging
The Apple Watch launched in 2015, and smartwatches have dominated the wearable landscape for almost a decade—until now, with new form factors coming into style. From January to October 2024, $916M went to digital health startups commercializing smart rings and microneedle patches, and brand-name devices like the Samsung Ring and Apple AirPods Pro introduced advanced health-tracking capabilities. Industry collaborations—such as Dexcom’s investment and strategic relationship with Oura—highlight the potential of wearables to transcend fitness and enter healthcare.

What comes next: As next-generation wearables gain consumer traction, they’re also expanding their health applications to areas like fertility, (peri)menopause, and cardiovascular health. Yet, wearables are still struggling to break into traditional healthcare reimbursement models—though Medicare Advantage plan coverage and HSA eligibility moves could open doors. For these innovations to move up the curve, they must demonstrate clinical validity and secure reimbursement, and lock in enterprise partnerships.

Patient phenotyping and digital twins
Nascent
The twin forces of AI and precision health are sparking interest in patient phenotyping (classifying patients based on biological, behavioral, or genetic attributes) and digital twins (virtual simulations of individual patients). These 1:1 approaches combine precision medicine and simulation—they’re nascent but show promise in tailoring care pathways, optimizing clinical trial designs, and improving treatment outcomes. Early movers in the space include startups like Phenomix and Found, which are assigning patients “phenotypes” and “metabolic prints” to personalize obesity care treatments, and Unlearn.AI, which raised $50M in February to apply digital twins to clinical trials. EMR player Canvas launched AI patients, a feature that generates high-fidelity simulated patients to speed up team training and protocol development at provider organizations.

What comes next: The future of patient phenotyping and digital twins will depend on their integration into clinical and research workflows, as well as their ability to demonstrate ROI. Startups will need to prove to customers that phenotypes and digital twins lead to better outcomes and/or lower costs. While these approaches are beginning to gain traction in some parts of healthcare (e.g., GLP-1 prescribing, ALS research), their trajectory on the innovation curve hinges on whether they become “must-have” technologies.

“Predictive AI tools are maturing and becoming more useful, and we’re starting to unlock more meaningful biomarkers from real-world patient databases. This makes our work at the intersection of biology, data mining, and AI especially exciting.”
– Mark Bagnall, CEO, Phenomix Sciences

Climate health innovation
Nascent
The environment has always influenced personal health (just think of allergies and air pollution). Yet, with extreme weather patterns like hurricanes, heatwaves, and forest fires becoming more common, awareness and urgency around climate health—i.e., the relationship between a person’s health and their environment—is growing. Researchers and industry groups are starting to consider how digital tools can help identify and track environmental determinants of health (EDH), alert susceptible patients to health risks (e.g., air quality or heat stroke warnings), and help treat climate-related exacerbations of conditions like COPD. Overall startup and commercial activity is still very nascent, though some players like CVS Health are already adapting case management and prescription delivery to support patients vulnerable to climate health risks.

What comes next: It’s going to take some foundational steps to get climate health innovation off the ground. Building awareness in healthcare—not just public health—is key. It’s promising to see more clinicians talk about climate’s impact on patient outcomes and incorporate environmental data into electronic health records. However, alignment between health systems, plans, and policymakers will be needed to develop the business cases that incentivize startups to build solutions in this space.

“There are startup opportunities in climate health innovation, but we need to build out fundamental infrastructure first. How are we tracking patients with the highest environmental health risks, based on their age, zip code, or the medications they’re taking? We need to integrate environmental, social, and medical data in order to build useful solutions.”
– Chethan Sarabu MD, Director of Clinical Innovation, Cornell Tech and Co-Founder, Climate Health Innovation & Learning Lab (CHILL)

What do you think?

Healthcare’s innovation curve is always evolving, shaped by new technologies and shifting priorities. As we track these trends into 2025, we’re eager to hear from you: What themes are you hearing about or exploring? What should we keep an eye on? Submit your ideas, and stay tuned for our future updates.

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Footnotes

For this piece, we defined year-to-date activity as activity between January 1 and October 31, 2024
Comparing partnerships across from January-December 2023 to those from January-October 2024
Foodsmart is a Rock Health portfolio company