Rise of Digital Health Brings New Risk Exposures for Health Industry

The COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting increase in the use of digital health care is resulting in rapid technological adoption in the healthcare industry but also creating new risk issues, according to a recent report.

According to the Willis Towers Watson white paper, The Future of Digital Health, the rise of digital health care "will profoundly and permanently reshape how healthcare is accessed and provided; a metamorphosis that is likely to produce novel and unexpected risks and consequent liability."

The white paper notes that digital health or "eHealth" broadly refers to the organization and delivery of health services and information through the Internet or related technologies. While technology has been playing a growing role in health care for decades, the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the trend.

In employing digital health, the healthcare industry must consider several challenges within any insurance liability analysis, the white paper said. Among them are the facts that regulatory and legal frameworks might lag technological advances, consumer privacy concerns, equity issues, a potential "digital divide" among different population groups, and usability issues for both patients and providers.

A variety of risks can be at play among different segments of the industry, including providers using or developing digital health technologies; digital health platform hosts, developers, and designers; and those manufacturing, distributing, and developing digital health technologies.

In that context, digital health exposures will require coverage for bodily injury and economic loss, regulated and unregulated products, and products and services often provided in cooperation with or at the direction of medical professionals, the Willis Towers Watson report said.

"The pandemic has propelled digital health onto the global stage, as healthcare providers around the world seek to leverage technology to help combat the crisis," Kirsten Beasley, head of Healthcare Broking, North America at Willis Towers Watson, said in a statement. "This digital health revolution will profoundly and permanently reshape how health care is accessed and provided so it is imperative that the insurance market consider how to provide integrated solutions that more seamlessly address emerging digital health perils."