The Consumerization of Care

Point-in-time interventions are losing to deeply personalized ecosystems. Moreover, the treat-and-discharge model is becoming structurally inadequate for chronic conditions. What patients need is a persistent, “living” layer: continuous, personalized and integrated into daily life. The companies getting this right aren’t building better products; they’re building infrastructure that underlies a patient’s life and compounds over time.

“The future of care isn’t just a better product or a treatment; it’s the service layer or the infrastructure that wraps around the patient’s life, connects the dots and compounds over time.”

Chiara Diana VP, Chief Design Officer, frog, part of Capgemini Invent
 

GLP-1s were the fastest drug launch in history. Primarily pitched as weight management treatment, we’re beginning to see their effects on patients. Research suggest that 50-75% stop using GPL-1s within a year, often undernourished, metabolically unprepared and without a plan. GLP-1s didn’t solve obesity, but they did open a window. The same logic applies across chronic conditions. Every treatment needs a wrapper: during administration to ease intervention while supporting adherence, nutrition, emotional and lifestyle changes; and after the course, to integrate back into daily life, sustain outcomes and prevent regression. That persistent, living layer is where the real opportunity lives. Here, Alnu Health is a shining example of what can be achieved by building a Health OS.

The traditional playbook was largely driven by healthcare professionals (HCPs): clinical reps, hospital adoption, medical journals and Google search. That assumption is breaking down on three fronts simultaneously.

The gatekeepers to the internet are changing. Conversational AI is replacing Google as the front door to health decisions, in many cases bypassing the clinical rep entirely. Gartner predicted a 25% drop in Google search volume by 2026. It was proven correct within healthcare, where the shift has already occurred. People are so deeply invested in their health, with LLMs now meeting that obsession perfectly. Capgemini research indicates that 51% of the baby boomer generation and 50% of Gen X now use AI for medical advice, which has in turn led to a 44% decrease in engagement with traditional healthcare services. A patient can spend eight hours interrogating their results with an AI companion, while clinician spend only ten minutes examining the data.

These tools are always on, deeply contextual and building trust fast. They are not just discovery platforms; they are becoming the point of purchase. The implication is clear: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is no longer enough. Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is the new frontier, urging organizations to stay relevant inside the conversations happening in Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity and other models.

“The front door to healthcare is no longer a clinic; it’s a chatbot, or a Reddit thread, or a TikTok at midnight.”

Laura Valiukeviciute, Strategy Lead, frog, part of Capgemini Invent
 

In addition to changing requirements for relevance, influence has become decentralized. Trust has migrated from institutions to lived experience. Reddit threads, TikTok and Instagram testimonials now shape purchase intent, treatment decisions and brand perception in ways clinical endorsement alone cannot. Younger generations never adopted the old channels to begin with. Superpower built its 150,000-person waitlist almost entirely through creator-led social, not paid search or HCP referral. That’s a distribution playbook borrowed from consumer brands. When applied to healthcare, it works.

Location is also once again becoming a strategic variable. As consumers gain more choice and are less bound by navigating the system, convenience becomes a key consideration. Where you exist in the real world matters as much as where you rank online. The winning formula is one that combines the digital and physical. You need the right online presence pulling people in, coupled with a physical location strategy: Own the right spaces, insertion points, and partnerships.

For decades, MedTech’s defensibility came from hardware: the device, the process, the distribution contract. That hasn’t gone away. If anything, when anyone can ship an app overnight, the durable physical IP becomes an even more strategic position. But don’t mistake that for safety. The benchmark has fundamentally shifted.

Design is now a clinical variable. Continuous Glucose Monitoring (CGM) was the proof-of-concept: clinical-grade technology, worn invisibly, always on, woven into daily life. That is the new standard, not a one-off. The strongest players no longer separate form, function and service; they design hardware, software and end-to-end support as a holistic care experience. This is where durable moats are now built, and where most incumbent players are still dangerously behind.

The consumerization of health will touch primary care, but specialty care is where it’s truly disruptive. This is because specialty is where patients feel the most pain, the most limited knowledge, and the longest wait times. Here, they encounter sequences of referrals and tests that feel designed to make you confused and frustrate you into leaving untreated. The lack of continuity, personalization and solutions may work for the few, but they fail the many.

Innovative disruptors use solving hard, targeted problems as their insertion point. Specialization creates defensibility: disease-specific evidence, payer relationships and community trust that no generalist platform can replicate. The deeper you go, the harder you are to displace. Empower Sleep is a great example. Sleep disorders affect 50-70 million Americans. Worldwide, 30-35% of people have symptoms of insomnia. From blunt medications and wearables that confirm what you already suspect, to an absence of personalization and adaptive care–the system is clearly broken. Empower Sleep ships an FDA-cleared home-sleep-testing kit, pairs patients with a clinical team and builds a dynamic protocol that evolves with the data. The CEO claims the company’s outcomes are two times better when benchmarked with standard care—but more on this later.

For established players, the warning is clear: Emerging competitors aren’t necessarily attacking your core, but they are occupying the specialist ignored gaps. The same move is available to you, and with it comes unmatched scale and clinical credibility.

The real bottleneck in healthcare was never data collection. Rather, it was always the messy middle: fragmentation, interpretation and execution. It’s all about turning signals into decisions, connecting devices, records and data sources that have never spoken to each other, all while acting at speed without a human initiating every step. Generative and agentic AI now make this possible. But the companies extracting real value aren’t adding AI to existing workflows; rather they are dismantling those workflows and rebuilding from scratch: patient journeys, clinical touchpoints and internal operations.

Matteo Franceschetti, CEO of Eight Sleep, attended the 2026 Stanford Consumer Health Conference and shared what this looks like in practice. He told the audience that the company went from zero to 15 AI employees in a matter of weeks, with a short-term projection of 30 to 50. Tasks generating ~$15M of value have been compressed from 30 days to five. Two-hour activities now take minutes. The talent and output multiplier is unprecedented. If you already have 10 engineers, but AI unlocks another 10 people from other disciplines to ship code, and then each gets 10 agents of their own, you effectively scale from 10 to 200 people with one hundred and eighty of them working around the clock. Externally, the product is improving at a pace that was once impossible. The company has a long-term vision to provide every patient with a personal AI agent that can manage their health across devices, wearables and data sources through a single conversational interface.

The question for established players isn’t whether to integrate AI; it’s whether you’re willing to redesign the whole system around it, or just the edges. The gap between those two answers will define the next decade.

The traditional reimbursement playbook is no longer sufficient. Two forces are colliding. Patients are paying out of pocket for things the system won’t cover: comprehensive testing, preventive devices, GLP-1s, creating a direct-to-consumer payment dynamic for which legacy players never had to design. Simultaneously, consumer health companies, often with subscription-native models, are pushing toward reimbursement. Oura is already reimbursable in the US through several accounts: FSA, HSA, and HRA accounts. Apple Watch was offered free to Aetna members who hit activity targets.

“The reimbursement-led model is being replaced by a consumer-first mindset. And consumers are unforgiving—they expect value, speed and convenience, and they walk away when they don’t get it.”

Malina Keutel, Program Director, frog, part of Capgemini Invent
 

For established players, standalone devices are losing relevance. The shift is toward subscription ecosystems, where hardware is the gateway, not the product; where retention, not acquisition, is the commercial engine. That requires a fundamentally different offer architecture that considers what sits in the base product, what sits behind a paywall, what gets bundled with services and what drives long-term engagement. The questions aren’t just commercial; they’re strategic. Which features command a premium? What is the patient actually willing to pay for continuously, not just once? How do you design for loyalty in a category where switching costs have historically been low?

The companies winning on payment solutions aren’t optimizing their reimbursement strategy; they’re rebuilding the commercial model from scratch.