Leading Innovation at the Intersection of Tech and Care: Inside Rock Health and Google Cloud’s JPM Week Dialogue

The tension between the promise of healthcare innovation and the realities of the current system was front and center at JPM 2026. During the busy conference week, Rock Health and Google Cloud co-hosted an intimate gathering of healthcare leaders, Leading Innovation at the Intersection of Tech and Care, at Google’s San Francisco offices. Founders, investors, operators, and industry executives came together to talk frankly about where digital health is headed, what’s working, and what’s still broken.

The conversation was grounded in data, shaped by lived experience, and refreshingly candid. The unifying takeaway was that progress in healthcare will depend less on breakthrough technology and more on the willingness to address the structural constraints that keep innovation from reaching people. The event’s sessions examined these constraints from a variety of angles and also surfaced thoughtful ideas for how to address them in service of a system that produces better outcomes for more people.

Data is saltwater

In her opening remarks, Google’s Shweta Maniar set the tone with a metaphor that stuck. “Data isn’t the new oil,” she said. “It’s salt water. Like the ocean, it’s everywhere, but we can’t drink it.”

Healthcare now generates an estimated 11,000 exabytes of data worldwide, spanning clinical records, genomics, wearables, claims, and real-world evidence. But the majority of this data sits fragmented across systems that don’t talk to one another. Without clean and connected data, even the most advanced models will struggle to deliver value. Therefore, the current big AI opportunity isn’t data creation, it’s making existing data usable. Whether the topic was funding, AI adoption, consumer experience, or digital health business models, the same question kept resurfacing: how do we turn what we have into something that works?

The current state of the digital health market

Rock Health’s Megan Zweig then laid the foundation for discussion by sharing the latest digital health funding data and market trends. In 2025, U.S. digital health funding reached $14.2B, up 35% from 2024. Average deal size increased across all stages despite fewer deals closing overall, signaling that capital is flowing to a smaller set of companies with greater conviction behind them. Further analysis highlighted that capital concentrated when mega-funds participated or the companies backed were AI-enabled.

Mega-fund participation commanded significant premiums: companies backed by either a16z or General Catalyst raised at 28–112% higher valuations, depending on stage. And AI-enabled startups raised on average 19% larger rounds than non-AI peers (with the premium climbing to 61% at Series C), and captured 54% of total digital health funding. They also picked up the pace, with several AI-focused startups completing back-to-back mega rounds within months, compressing what once took years into quarters. Compressed fundraising timelines leave less runway to test assumptions and refine execution, raising a key question for the industry: does speed shorten the path to scale, or does it magnify execution risk?

Momentum also extended to M&A activity, which increased 61% year over year, driven largely by digital health companies acquiring other digital health companies. In many cases, inorganic growth has become a faster path to AI capabilities, talent, or market share than building internally.

With “the AI of it all” top of mind, the stage was set for the panel conversation—when speed and capital are no longer limiting factors, what determines whether digital health innovation reaches consumers in meaningful ways?

The limiting factors of consumer-centered innovation

Moderated by Rock Health’s Katie Drasser, with leaders from Collective Health, Evidation Health, and Health in Her HUE, the panel turned to the structural barriers— including incentives, affordability, trust, and usability—that still stand between technological progress and impact.

Ali Diab, Co-Founder and CEO of Collective Health, was candid in reflecting that when healthcare is treated as both a public good and a business, as it is in the U.S., individual healthcare consumers and the employers who typically cover the cost of most of their care pay the price for that contradiction. Expanding further, people often don’t know what care costs until weeks after they receive it. Contracts between insurers and providers often obscure pricing and reward opacity. Ali proposed that healthcare could benefit from government regulation in establishing transparent and consistent pricing based on Medicare rates. From there, the discussion moved to what AI can realistically improve today.

Where AI is actually helping today

With these constraints on the table, the panelists focused on practical places where AI can address the problems plaguing the healthcare system. Examples the panelists shared:

Ambient clinical documentation
Labeling and organizing massive datasets so humans can interpret them
Recognizing patterns and flagging anomalies across longitudinal data
Prompting patients at the right moment to provide context or additional information, or to take action
Billing and claims processing, prior authorizations
Helping patients prepare for doctor visits and enabling more productive conversations
Supporting caregivers, not just patients, in navigating care

Notably, none of the panelists framed AI as a replacement for clinicians. The emphasis was on augmentation, not automation.

Sustainable business models are no longer optional

Another theme that was underscored throughout the discussion was the shifting definition of company value. Revenue growth alone no longer signals success. Profitability, unit economics, and defensible moats are increasingly important.

As expectations around profitability and durability rise, many digital health companies are taking a fresh look at what it actually takes to build a sustainable business. In a market that rewards focus over scale-at-all-costs, partnerships are an important channel for responsible growth. Partnerships succeed when incentives are aligned, value is clearly defined, and each party understands what they’re contributing.

Panelists shared examples of partnerships that were grounded in practical problem-solving. Leslie Oley Wilberforce, CEO of Evidation Health, described how compensating individuals for their data forces discipline into the business model and clarifies value on both sides of the exchange. That same approach shapes Evidation’s partnerships, which are built around specific problems and explicit economics.

Ashlee Wisdom, Founder and CEO of Health in Her HUE, shared how offering free access to consumers unlocked partnerships with pharma and health plans seeking more diverse clinical trials and trusted patient education. In both cases, partnerships are core to how the business works.

The “magic wand” question

When asked what single structural change would most improve healthcare, panelists called for:

Shifting incentives from transactional to preventive
Giving consumers access to and control over their health data
Making pricing transparent and understandable
Addressing affordability head-on, rather than designing around it

As the event closed, leaders reflected on how they maintain faith that the system can improve: commitment to building through constraints, partnering intentionally, and staying focused on problems that matter. Looking to the year ahead, digital health is entering a more demanding phase; these are the conversations that move the industry forward, and we look forward to continuing them with the digital health community.

Rock Health accelerates healthcare innovation through an early-stage venture fund, a digital health strategy group, and a non-profit advancing ecosystem change.

We bring leaders together through convenings like our event with Google Cloud to spark real dialogue and collaboration. Interested in co-hosting an event or partnering with Rock Health? Reach out to us!