Digital health stopped being optional a while ago. The system has already moved on. For most patients and providers, it has simply become part of how care is delivered.
Across Europe, telehealth and remote care accelerated rapidly during the pandemic and never fully receded. Expectations shifted. Habits formed. Digital access to care is no longer novel. It is assumed.
Looking ahead to 2026, the real question is not whether digital care exists. It is whether it is designed to genuinely support long-term care delivery. As digital tools become embedded in chronic care pathways, fragmented journeys and outdated experiences quietly erode engagement.
When digital care feels disconnected from everyday life, people disengage. Sometimes gradually. Sometimes all at once.
Access alone does not deliver outcomes
At a system level, access to digital health tools has expanded significantly. But access alone has never been the hard part. Sustained engagement is.
Across digital health programmes, disengagement within the first 90 days is common. In many cases, engagement drops before behaviour has a chance to change. When this happens, the economic promise of prevention quietly disappears.
Many solutions focus heavily on data capture. Far fewer succeed in turning that data into something people can realistically act on. Usage declines. Motivation fades. The programme exists, but outcomes do not materialise.
Chronic conditions are not shaped by dashboards. They are shaped by everyday decisions, repeated behaviours and the quality of guidance people receive between appointments. Without continuity, support becomes episodic. Outcomes suffer.
For providers and payers, low engagement is not just a user problem. It is the single biggest factor eroding return on investment in prevention.
Why this is a structural problem, not a product problem
This challenge is not unique to individual organisations. It reflects a deeper structural issue in how digital health has been deployed.
The World Economic Forum has repeatedly highlighted that digital solutions and AI in healthcare struggle to scale not because the technology lacks capability, but because health systems remain fragmented. Siloed data, disconnected workflows and misaligned incentives prevent even proven tools from delivering sustained impact.
In other words, digital health has not failed because tools are weak. It has failed because care delivery itself has not been redesigned around them.
What a modern care experience must deliver
A digital-first care experience must earn its place in people’s daily lives. Research and real-world delivery point to a small set of expectations that consistently determine whether engagement holds or fades.
Clarity and ease of use
People expect healthcare experiences to feel as clear and intuitive as the digital services they use elsewhere. When interfaces are confusing or navigation is heavy, trust erodes quickly.
Guidance, not just measurement
Collecting health data is easy. Making sense of it is not. Data without interpretation becomes noise. People want to understand what their data means and what to do next.
Continuity between moments of care
One-off interventions rarely change long-term behaviour. Support must extend beyond appointments, with reinforcement over time.
Visible clinical credibility
Digital care must feel clinically grounded and professionally overseen. When clinical structure is unclear, confidence and adherence drift away.
Fit with everyday routines
Behaviour change lasts longer when care aligns with how people already live. Interventions that demand disruption struggle to sustain momentum at scale.
Designing care as a programme, not a product
At Liva, our role is not to deliver isolated digital touchpoints.
We design care experiences that translate data into guidance and guidance into sustained action.
How this is delivered depends on context. For some organisations, this means providing a digital platform that integrates into existing care models. For others, it involves working more closely to design structured care programmes that combine data, guidance and clinical oversight.
What remains consistent is the design logic. Care is not treated as a set of features, but as an experience that must hold together across the care journey.
This is also why scaling digital care remains difficult across the industry. According to the World Economic Forum, digital health solutions often fail to expand beyond pilot settings because tools are introduced without rethinking how care is delivered around them.
Without this redesign, scale works against outcomes. As programmes grow, guidance becomes generic, support thins out and adherence declines.
Looking ahead
As health systems face increasing pressure from chronic disease, digital-first care will continue to expand. The differentiator will no longer be who offers digital care, but who can prove that it works at scale.
The next phase of digital health will not be defined by smarter tools, but by whether care delivery itself is redesigned around them.
At Liva, this is the future we are building towards. Not more technology for its own sake, but better designed care experiences that support people and systems over time.
